In the early 2000s, our biggest worries were if our coca-cola lip smackers ACTUALLY tasted like coke, if our mom’s cleaned our juicy couture set, and that someone may be using our halloween candy to harm us. We used to worry that inside our snickers and twix would be glass or rat poison– at least our mothers did. But today, the worry goes a step further, to the outer layer: the wrapper.
We’re banning the straws and the plastic bags, but all those mini candy bars will be littering streets and homes worse than any leaf pile. It is estimated that Americans will spend about $2.6 billion on Halloween candy (2019), which roughly equals 600 million pounds (3.5 per person), and out of all this about $400 million of that candy goes to waste.
But the real nightmare is not how much candy we consume (because who can deny us that chocolatey goodness) but how much waste it creates.
Really think about the Halloween candy aisle of your local Target, drugstore, CVS, Walmart, etc and consider all that plastic. You see, candy is wrapped in a plastic/aluminum blend which is almost impossible to recycle. And even if we COULD, the small size of wrappers makes it very difficult to physically recycle at the plant and also is just not worth the trouble of recycling (economically)– meaning most of those candy wrappers end up in the landfill.
The (small, temporary) solution? Look for foil wrapped (hershey’s) or paper boxed (dots) treats as an easy solution. Or of course you can always be one of those “fruit is nature’s candy” type moms. Those candy corns aren’t looking so bad anymore, are they?
