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Halloween is a creative and fun holiday.  We can't get enough of it.  It's the second most commercially successful holiday, with Christmas being the first.  Whether you are hosting a party, decorating or trick-or-treating, there are plenty of great ways to help keep your impact on the earth minimal and your fun maximized.

Most commercially purchased Halloween decorations and costumes are made from petroleum-based products.  Cutting down on what you buy will help reduce the amount of fossil fuels needed to create all that "stuff".

Decorate with natural items like pumpkins, gourds, corn stalks and hay stacks.  Use LED decorative lights, which use a fraction of the energy of the standard decorative lighting.  Halloween decorations are usually up for weeks, so the energy savings of LED lights can be significant and that saves you money too.

Another way to make a difference is in what you wear.  If you can reuse an already used costume by wearing it again or swapping it with a friend, you keep it from ending up in a landfill - that's a good thing.  If you don't want to reuse, consider making a costume from items you already have in your closet, around the house or from a thrift store.  Either way, you will be helping to preserve the fossil fuels necessary to make that new costume that you didn't buy.

Finally, to keep the holiday good for kids as well as the earth, consider passing out healthier teats or treasures instead of traditional candy.

Try these tricks for greening up your Halloween:

Halloween candy sales average about 2 billion dollars annually in the United States.

I am wearing a costume that my mom made for my dad to wear the Halloween that I was born.  It's a cotton prisoner's costume.  He was supposed to be on the chain gang and mom was going to dress in all black and be the ball - being "round" and pregnant - attached to him with a chain.  As with many great plans, it never came to be.  I was born the night of the party, so he never actually wore the costume.  I however have worn it over and over for more than 20 years.  Now that's reuse!