Boo! It’s Halloween night, and your dad is munching on your KitKat. “I’m just checking for poison,” as he excuses himself.

It’s unlikely that there’s really poison in the candy. Yet there is a different problem that might be worth a look: the chances of it poisoning the environment.

“Candy wrappers. All over the place,” said Kingston L. “People just leave them there.” 

Each year, on November 1st, candy trash litters the streets. And while some trash can be easily cleaned up, there is more that can’t, such as one-time use costumes. 

“If you buy something you can’t wear regularly, you’re wasting your money,” Lyra L. “It’s just a waste.”

Many costumes are made of synthetic materials such as polyester, which takes nearly 200 years to biodegrade. 

“People [leave] bits of their costumes around, just parts that they forgot, lying all over,” ,” said Shelby P. 

And that’s not all.

“The plastic buckets as well,” Shelby P. said. “People forget them and leave them around.”

So, how do we fix this? 

“Buy something you can wear on a daily basis,” said Lyra L.

“Just clean up after yourself,” said Sofia M. “Pick up the wrappers you leave behind.”

While tidying up can help keep streets clean of wrappers, it cannot get rid of all of the plastic waste produced every Halloween. More changes must be made. Individual plastic-wrapped candies have got to go.

According to Entrepreneur, “Americans purchase nearly 600 million pounds of candy each year for Halloween, the equivalent of six Titanic ships.” Almost 600 million pounds of candy wrapper trash is disposed of each year in the U.S alone. Due to the materials of the wrappers, they are nearly impossible to recycle as recycling companies often lose money in the process. Solutions often fall short of practicality, such as TerraCycle’s Zero-Waste Box which comes with a hefty price tag. 

“They should make wrappers reusable, like Zip-lock bags,” Sofia M. said.

But how could kids reuse such a small package? 

“[Use] wood, metal, paper… [anything] as long as it’s not plastic,” said Jeremy A.  

How would you open a metal Taki’s container? Imagine the splinters coming from a wooden Kit-Kat? Long-term practical solutions aren’t easy to find. Banning polyester and plastic candy wrappers is unreasonable. Students have to make the effort to keep things clean by picking up garbage and wrappers. 

“Go around, picking up trash after,” 7th-grader Taylor S. said. “If everybody who trick-or-treated did that, [there would be ] less trash.”

Though there is no way to completely eliminate plastic waste, students undoubtedly want to help the environment.

“Make sure the Earth is happy,” Taylor S. stated. “Keep the ocean clean.”