Eco-Friendly Halloween Decorations for Any Style & Any Budget

Halloween decorating can be a lot of fun, environmentally friendly, and cheap regardless of your taste and style.

Classic (and perfectly natural):  A collection of gourds and pumpkins can look aesthetically pleasing against a bale of hay or some corn stalks on your front porch.  All are compostable and the hay and corn stalks will make a great cover for flower beds after the fall holidays pass.  If you leave your pumpkins uncarved, you can pull off this look through Thanksgiving.  Chrysanthemums give bold color and will come back year after year if planted in the ground.  Indoors you can decorate with gourds, pumpkins, pinecones and dried leaves.  Wreaths of colorful leaves or pinecones make a stunning wall hanging.  A simple white pumpkin next to a few cattails in a vase makes a simple and elegant centerpiece on a table.  You don’t have to spend much money on natural decorations (especially if you grow your own) and they NEVER go out of fashion.

Even Martha Stewart can set a stunning table using white Lumina pumpkins as a simple centerpiece:

Kid Friendly, Craftacular, Slightly Spooky: Even the most tricked out house on a Trick-or-Treating Route can look pretty cool with a few dollars and some effort.  Recycled egg cartons and cans can make bats, spiders (paint the cups black, push black pipe cleaners through the “bodies” and add some red-painted eyes for spooky spiders!) and pumpkin votives.  Whether you’re making cheesecloth ghosts or a skeleton out of old milk jugs, you can recycle all kinds of household goods when Halloween decorating.  Enviro Girl found a world of ideas online and was thankful she’d saved egg cartons all summer.  Her son’s birthday party will have bats and spiders galore and it cost pennies for the paint and pipe cleaners!  Enviro Girl also found MANY great DIY ideas at the Better Homes & Gardens website:

Creepy Halloween Madness: There are still those for whom Halloween decorating is the Ultimate Thrill.  If you have to spend money on the ghoulish decor, environmentally friendly options are available, like the solar powered corpse zombie.

Etsy offers a huge variety of handmade Halloween decorations and if you’re bound to buy these things,  handmade or used goods from a thrift or resale shop are the “greenest” way to go.  If making your entire house look haunted is your desire, treat your Halloween decorations like Christmas decorations — store them and use them again each year.  If you’re throwing a once-in-a-lifetime Halloween soiree, rent your supplies (fog machine, coffin, animated vampires).  You’ll save money and reduce your ecological impact by doing so.

Whatever your taste, whatever your budget, you can have a “green” Halloween.  Reduce and recycle to make your Halloween decorating eco-friendly.