Get your last-minute tips from Danny Seo, environmental lifestyle expert, in this YouTube video.  Happy Halloween!

If you’re stuck for a last minute Halloween costume, how about making a green monster mask.  It’s not just green in colour, it’s green as in eco-friendly too.  Make your green monster mask from stuff that you would normally throw out, like a cardboard box, and used aluminium foil (here’s hoping you’re already using recycled aluminium foil - so that would make it double recycled, fantastic).

Full instructions for making your green monster mask can be found at Gorilla in the Greenhouse.

The ever helpful and creative ReadyMade website explains step-by-step how to carve a Halloween pumpkin, and to add a green twist to the project, they have supplied a downloadable carving template to turn your pumpkin into a CFL pumpkin [please note: download is a pdf].

Here are a few more tips to make your jack-o-lantern even greener:

Grow your own pumpkin (too late for that this year, but don’t forget to plant your Halloween pumpkins next spring) or buy a locally (and preferably organically) grown pumpkin.  If you’re a townie, try your local farmers market.

Don’t throw away what you scoop out of your pumpkin.  Make soup or a pie from the flesh and roast the seeds.  If you don’t eat them, then at the very least, compost your pumpkin’s innards.

Use a soya candle in your Halloween pumpkin.  Soya candles burn cleaner and last longer (it is a CFL pumpkin after all) than regular candles.

Bat habitat is fast disappearing, so why not give a bat a home this Halloween.

Install a bat box in the eaves of your house to avoid bats being bothered by people or cats, or install it in a tree, either around 1.5 metres high for long-eared bats to use, or high up at 5 metres for the pipistrelle bats.

The Chavenage bat box is made by Wildlife World, who use green energy, FSC certified wood and carbon offsets to ensure that their operation is as eco-friendly as possible.  This natural, attractive bat box is made of strong cedar or alder timber, ensuring longevity, great insulation and together with it’s narrow entrance, protection from predators.

Photo credit (bat in flight): Bistrosavage

If you’re planning to throw a Halloween party for the children, or maybe even for the grown-ups, here are a three little tips to make your party an altogether greener one.

Think organic, local and Fairtrade - when you’re planning your party food and decor, opt for local apples for the apple bobbing, local pumpkins for the Jack ‘o Lantern, Fairtrade and organic chocolates and sweet treats, and local and where possible organic food too.

Think biodegradable -  get your hands on some biodegradable crockery instead if you’re a paper plate junkie.

Think reuse and repurpose - for costumes and decorations, use what you already have.  Get a book out of the library on making Halloween costumes and make one yourself out of second hand materials.

Photo credit: fabbio 

Here are another two Halloween treat ideas for health-conscious parents.  Halloween is just next week, so don’t leave it too late to get your hands on delicious and healthier treats for the neighbourhood kids.   There’s no need to give up your preference for organic when buying sweet treats for children.

Village Bakery Organic Berry Bars

Village Bakery Wheat-free Organic Berry Bars come in packs of 4.  They are made of chewy oats, cranberries, blueberries, strawberries and rasberries, with no added fat.

Yummy yet healthy, a good compromise with the kids.

Free Organic Laidback Liquorice

Laidback Liquorice is the ultimate organic liquorice experience.  It’s “the softest, smoothest, most sumptuous liquorice ever to take on a taste bud!”. So it says on the packet, and I am in full agreement.

While it’s traditional to keep vampires away with garlic, stakes and silver bullets, in this day and age it’s the “power vampires” that we have to be more careful of.  And garlic’s not going to help you there.  What you need is a wireless smart electricity meter like the efergy meter, to find out which of your appliances are literally sucking the energy out of your home.

Once you’ve established which are the culprits, you can take action.  Here are some tips about where to start looking for
“vampires” in your home.  The television, mobile phone chargers, re-chargeable tools, cordless phones, baby monitors, set-top boxes, video and DVD machines, and desktop PCs.

To tackle the chargers, baby-monitos and re-chargeable tools is simple, just switch them off when they’re no longer charging or in use.

For televisions, set-top boxes, hi-fi’s, video and DVD machines, you can solve your standby issues with a Bye Bye Standby Energy Saving Kit.  Just plug your appliances into the wall via the Bye Bye Standby smart sockets, and use the remote to switch them off properly when you’re not using them.

For your PC, there’s the EcoButton, that switches it all off at the touch of a switch, and all back on again just where you left off.

Photo credit: bryancrump

As the scariest night of the year approaches, give some thought to what you’ll be dishing out to neighbourhood children who stop by in their scary finery.  High fructose corn syrup and artificial colours?  I hope not.

How about this box of 200 Fairtrade milk chocolate mini-chocolates from Divine?  You’ll have plenty of treats to go around, and you can feel super-ethical about giving away good quality sweets bursting with Fairtrade ingredients: Fairtrade Sugar, Fairtrade cocoa butter, dried cream, whole milk powder, Fairtrade cocoa mass, cocoa mass, emulsifier: Soya lecithin (non GM), real vanilla.

Continuing with the theme of gadgets that help you live more sustainably, here are some more ideas for consideration.

The efergy energy saving meter is a wireless electricity meter that tracks your energy use so that you know exactly how much you are consuming at any given time, what it is costing you and an estimate of your personal contribution to climate change.  The data is stored so that you can track the trends and changes in energy consumption in your household.  Easily installed by complete novices. Costs around £45.

You can save about £50 a year by using an EcoButton on your PC or laptop.  When you press the EcoButton you put your machine into eco-mode to save energy until you come back to it and press the button again to reactivate it where you left off.  Expect to pay around £15 per button.

The Bye Bye Standby energy saving kit works by totally cutting power to the devices plugged into it when they’re not in use, saving power that devices would have consumed on standby.  You get one remote control and three sockets for £34.99 and one remote and two sockets for £19.99.

Now, I like gadgets as much as the next man (woman), but I like my gadgets as green as they come.  If you are a gadget-junkie, get your fix with some of the sustainable stars of the gadget world.

Solar Chargers

I get a real kick out of charging my phone with a solar charger, especially when I’m out hiking or camping (or away from an electric socket) and others are whining about their phones running out of battery.  There are lots of these on the market these days, ranging from around £20.  They’re suitable for charging phones, iPods, and other hand-held devices.

Earthdrive

Flash memory for the green at heart.  This one-of-a-kind gadget is made of biodegradable materials that are fully recyclable, as well as being waterproof, dustproof, shock proof and ESD (electro-static discharge) proof.

Solar laptop bag

No self-respecting green geek would be without one of these Juice solar laptop bags.  It’s made of recycled materials (of course) and turns sunlight into free electricity with its solar panel.  The 7 Watt flexible solar panel is made up of 52 solar cells and represents the latest in flexible solar technology.  The model that you see here sells for around the £300 mark.

More green gadgets soon.