Halloween is a fun day, but ... it's also an environmental nightmare. Americans spend about $5 billion on this holiday and generate a lot of mostly plastic waste. Here are tips to help you have a more "eeek-o-friendly" Halloween.

Choose natural decorations   

Carve that pumpkin, then enjoy homemade pumpkin pie and baked seeds. Create Halloween atmosphere with bales of hay and corn stalks, and gather leaves into piles (then tempt trick-or-treaters to jump in!). Natural decorations can be left to biodegrade in your yard, or compost them at Urbana's Landscape Recycling Center.

Make your own costumes and makeup

Use items you already have at home or find materials at local re-use suppliers, like The I.D.E.A. Store. Envision your broken umbrella as bat wings! To avoid less-healthy ingredients in store-bought Halloween makeup, search online homemade recipes for blood, warts, face paint and scars. Check out these costume and make-up ideas:

39 last-minute costumes

Non-toxic Halloween makeup

Green Halloween: The healthy, eek-o-friendly & FUN revolution

Collect goodies in re-useable containers

Those with handles - used gift bags, cloth grocery bags or baskets - are easiest for youngsters to carry. Spare pillowcases are sturdy, but last year's trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood seemed to drag or trip over them.   

Offer alternative, non-candy treasures

Also on  the Green Halloween web site you'll find sources for functional give-aways, from decorative band-aids to recycled crayons molded into neat shapes. Other suggested hand-outs include seashells, stickers, coins, seed packets and foreign postage stamps. Or make small sun-catchers; write jokes and fortunes on scrap papers, roll them and tie with yarn; or assemble mini-books for children to record Halloween memories.

Remember others at Halloween

Left-over, unopened candies are welcomed by the Eastern Illinois Foodbank, where they are distributed to local clients. At least one local dentist, Dr. Wes Chladny, is hosting a Halloween-candy buy-back program (check to see if your own dentist offers a similar program). You can also register to participate in the annual "Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF" and raise funds to provide clean water, food, medicine and education to children in 150 countries. And check out TerraCycle's packaging collection program to learn how to transform candy wrappers into funds or charitable gifts for non-profit organizations.

If there's a single thread that connects The I.D.E.A. Store customers and volunteers it has to be imagination. Some of the most talented, resourceful people out there come through our doors regularly. What's more, so many of you are eager to share your ideas and projects with us and the entire The I.D.E.A. Store community - either on Facebook or by bringing your re-use projects in to the store (and sometimes even donating 

them for our classroom display shelves!). Thanks for keeping us in the loop!                     

As promised in the last newsletter, we're continuing to showcase your re-use/repurposing projects here. This time around, the featured project is this Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) assemblage by artist and volunteer extraordinaire Sheri Stinson. Sheri, who finds inspiration in the work of Joseph Cornell, considered by many as the father of modern assemblage art. Sheri logs hours and hours of volunteer time at the store each month, mainly assisting with intake and sorting of all the fabulous donations we receive.

Send photos of your projects to melissa.mitchell@the-idea-store.org. Or bring your creations to the store and we'll photograph them.

The Champaign Urbana Schools Foundation saw a need in the community to accomplish several things: 1.  Support the arts and arts education, 2.  Support environmental education in our communities, 3. Impact the environment by reducing the rate of waste disposal, 4. create a place for everyone to have access to quality materials and 5. Support itself in light of the difficult economic times.  So donate your discards and shop re-use.  Its about making a difference!

 www.cuSchoolsFoundation.org