Halloween: a holiday to watch scary movies, eat delicious candy and collect cheap costumes, which will sit in the back of your closet, collecting dust for years until they finally end up in a landfill.
Although Halloween has remained true to its origins of wearing costumes to fend off spirits, today, the holiday is fueled by fast fashion and consumerism. Halloween costumes, designed to be worn one day a year for a few hours at most, epitomize the wastefulness of fast fashion. By Halloween next year, the costume will likely be deemed outdated or overdone and is cursed to its fate of contributing to the global waste problem.
A 2019 investigation based in the United Kingdom by environmental group Hubbub found that 83% of Halloween costume materials were oil-based plastics like polyester, PVC, acrylic or spandex, which cannot be easily recycled. With about 35 million costumes being thrown away in the United States each year, almost 2,000 tons of plastic waste go to landfills, which take hundreds of years to decompose.
“Halloweekend,” during which college students often attend multiple Halloween parties or events, motivates young adults to have numerous costumes per year. As they face pressure to have perfect, on-trend costumes on a tight budget, many resort to buying from cheap fast-fashion retailers such as Shein and Amazon or specialty stores like Spirit Halloween.
With no incentive to make high-quality, sustainable pieces, these cheap retailers often get sloppy and even borderline dangerous. According to The Guardian, the Center for Environmental Health found substances such as lead, cadmium and BPA in Halloween Express and Spirit Halloween costumes, with levels high enough to legally require a warning label.
If you’re trying to piece together a DIY costume from fast-fashion giants like Shein or Amazon, their apparel has also been found to have high levels of carcinogens like phthalates, lead and formaldehyde. Contact with lead can damage the nervous system, while ingesting cadmium can lead to irreversible intestinal problems and hormone imbalance. Further, BPA has been found to attack the endocrine system.
It doesn’t require much to make a significant difference in the waste one produces, especially when it comes down to one day a year. For concerned consumers, it is possible to enjoy Halloween and have fashionable Halloweekend costumes while staying away from fast fashion, no matter your budget.
Affordable, sustainable options include thrifting from second-hand stores, such as the Garment District in Cambridge, which has its own Halloween costume section to browse, or borrowing pieces from friends and family. By choosing these eco-friendly alternatives, you can celebrate Halloween in a way that is fun, creative and mindful of the planet.