We had a great weekend at the Green Edmonds Festival! Not only was the weather perfect, but the vibe was great too – and we met so many wonderful visitors and vendors. Can’t wait for next year.

At the event, we had with us a display board of treat and treasure “alternatives” to conventional Halloween candy. As always, children and adults were excited to see some of the ideas we suggested and everyone wanted to know where they could be found.

While many Green Halloween suggested items are sold in natural food and/or craft stores, some require forethought or preparation, which is the subject of this post: now is the time to think about what you are going to hand out to your neighborhood trick-or-treaters. Waiting until the last minute means that you’ll pay more for products you may not feel so good about.

If you plan ahead, you can:

Make “treasures” that are low or no-cost, such as jokes, puzzles or fortunes (how about printing a bunch on recycled paper, cutting into strips and rolling up into little tubes secured with some orange and black wool yarn). Origami pumpkins might also be fun.

Save money by finding sales. For example, Sjaaks bite sized chocolate is organic, fair trade, shade grown and is sold in large or small tubs. If you order now there is still time to allow for shipping and you can save 15% by using the coupon code: GreenHalloween15. You may want to consider ordering with friends and neighbors – this way you can split the shipping and save even more.

Customize your goodies. How about ordering come temporary tattoos that say, “Happy Hallogreen from the Smith Family!” (of course, you’d want to enter your own name). Soy crayons, recycled content spinning tops, and recycled whistles are just some of the other fun treasures that can be ordered through Weisenbach Printing at www.recycledproducts.com.

For a list of dozens of healthy, healthy-er and eco-wise treats and treasures click here.

To see our featured products (from companies contributing a portion of their sales to Treeswing, our host organization), click here.

Items in photo:

• Recycled content stickers
• Soy crayons
• Organic, fair trade, herbal tea in kid-friendly flavor
• Clif Bar mini
• Larabar mini
• GleeGum mini
• Organic agave stick
• Repurposed confetti
• Organic chocolate

This entry was posted on Monday, September 15th, 2008 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Treats and Treasures. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.