OH, SHUT UP.

Meet Alexander Nazaryan, senior Yahoo White House correspondent, idiot.  "Halloween is an ecological disaster."

Every parent of young children has awoken on Nov. 1 to the aftermath of Halloween: piles of candy wrappers, discarded costumes, molding pumpkins and decorations demanding to be taken down.

Halloween is an expensive holiday, wreaking havoc on family budgets. And with children expected to consume as much as 7,000 calories on Oct. 31 because of all the added sugar in their diets, the holiday is also a public health calamity.

I grew up the child of Depression babies who knew how to squeeze nickels, and yet we managed to enjoy trick or treating, and our dental checkups were generally satisfactory. The Nazaryan household sounds like a real fun place to live.

But scariest of all is the damage Halloween does to the planet.

All those candy wrappers have to go somewhere. So do all the plastic pumpkins, plastic vampire teeth, plastic Harry Potter wands.

And where they go, for the most part, is into landfills and waterways, where they contribute to a plastics problem that has become a global challenge. New research suggests that many of the single-use plastics we discard turn into invisible particles called microplastics that can cause serious damage to human health.

We all imbibe the equivalent of a credit card in microplastics each week, scientists say.

Now that’s a scary thought.

No, the scary thought is that this guy is part of the regime media.  Does the plastics consumption from even the most gluttonous haul of trick or treating compare with the plastic involved in bottled water consumed on a random day during beach season?

Seriously.  In the course of lamenting the volume of candy wrappers, the reporter hides the good news.  "Americans will consume about 600 million pounds of candy on Halloween, almost all of it individually wrapped in difficult-to-recycle plastic wrappers."

Follow the link, dear reader.

Mars is partnering with Lexington, Kentucky-based Rubicon Technologies, a consultant and software provider that connects companies and municipalities to recyclers. Since 2019, Rubicon has had its own program called Trick or Trash, which mails one free box to schools, businesses and community groups to collect candy wrappers for recycling. An additional box, or a box for personal use, is $100; Rubicon says that covers the cost of making the box, shipping it both ways and recycling the wrappers. Rubicon expects to send out 5,000 boxes this year.

Mars and Rubicon won’t say how much they’re spending on their Halloween programs. Rubicon notes that it pays extra to UPS to offset the carbon emissions from shipping.

Plastic wrappers are ideal for candy for lots of reasons. They’re cheap and lightweight, which cuts down on shipping costs, said Muhammad Rabnawaz, an associate professor in the school of packaging at Michigan State University. They’re also easy to modify for different functions; some might have a coating so candy doesn’t stick to them, for example.

But plastic wrappers are a challenge for recycling companies. They often contain a mix of materials, like foil, which must be separated. They’re small and flimsy, making it easy for them to bypass typical sorting equipment. They have to be cleaned to remove grease, oil and other food waste. They’re multi-colored, so when they’re mixed together they come out as an unappealing brown.

There are nevertheless gains from trade to be harvested.  Let's recall that Wise Experts once held thin slab casting to be impractical and recycling steel to roll into sheets not cost effective.  In addition, Hallowe'en is one day, and those trips to the beach, let alone those days you just want to pop something in the microwave, add up.

Janet Dominitz, the executive director of the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, said recycling alone will never keep up with amount of packaging waste people generate. Dominitz said single-use plastic packaging needs to be eliminated altogether.

“The problem isn’t the number of candy wrappers on Halloween, but the 365 days a year that our infrastructure is set up to throw away,” she said.

It's worth remembering, dear reader, that single-use plastic packaging preserves freshness and might involve less material intensity than the foil wrappers of yore, let alone galvanized cans, plus they're less prone to product tampering, something that might be on peoples' minds at Hallowe'en.

One gets the feeling that the Nazaryan household will be the venue for a Puritan Thanksgiving, with nobody having any fun.

As in many other facets of American life, there are ways to mitigate the ecological harms caused by Halloween — and still have a good time.

It may seem daunting to change the way we celebrate a beloved holiday. It may also be necessary.

“People in general don’t feel like they’re able to change the system because the system is so big. I think that’s exactly what we are facing with trying to deal with Halloween and candy: The system feels so big, I don’t know where to start making that change,” Indiana University environmental policy scholar Shahzeen Attari told the Indianapolis Star.

Some steps are relatively obvious, like making your costumes and reusing decorations. You’ll save the planet—and money, too.

Put another way, trust markets.  The candy makers understand that packaging is money thrown away, and being able to reduce and reuse the materials is a value proposition; while the householders can figure out that reusing the decorations is prudent.  I mean, we all have the option of living our lives like Depression babies, don't we?  Heck, based on what that article says about natural pumpkins in landfills, the modest plastic pumpkin at Cold Spring Shops headquarters, which will probably stay in use for as long as I'm here, could have value as a methane offset, but for transaction costs.