Hallowe’en is quickly approaching but there’s a lot more to it than bags of candy and carving out ghoulish pumpkins to make creative jack o’ lanterns. In fact, it can be pretty sustainable, as well.
Our friends at the Rainforest Alliance have put together five tips to green your hallowe’en that cover everything you need, from
candy to costumes.
With Halloween just around the corner, it’s time to stock up on chocolates and sweet treats for the inevitable rush of trick-or-treaters. Ensure your holiday is scary in spirit, but easy on the environment with the Rainforest Alliance’s five tips to green your Halloween.
Choose Rainforest Alliance Certified™ chocolate for Halloween treats. Farmed on over 18 million acres of tropical land, some five million farmers rely on cocoa for their livelihoods. Unfortunately, many of these clear forests to expand their cocoa-growing lands. By choosing chocolate that features the green frog seal, you’re rewarding farmers that protect tropical forests and support the well-being of workers and local communities.
Make terrifyingly tasty treats with Rainforest Alliance Certified chocolate, bananas and coffee. Check out our “Haunted Halloween Recipes” (keep reading below for one of our favourites!) and visit our Shop the Frog page to find certified products near you.
Teach your kids where their favorite chocolate treats come from and how they impact people, wildlife and the planet. Visit the Rainforest Alliance’s Kids’ Corner and play the online game Track it Back, to learn where chocolate comes from, where cocoa is grown and how it is harvested! Also visit our virtual rainforest, “Living in the Chocó Forests of Ecuador: The Chachi Cocoa Farmers.” (Brush up on your own knowledge about cocoa farming here.)
Ensure your little trick-or-treater collects candy with a reusable bag. Even better, promote our global conservation work by giving tricker or treaters Rainforest Alliance reusable bags — your gift with a $50 donation.
Instead of driving, walk your tick-or-treater around your local neighborhood. By walking, you are helping to save emissions, while also saving on your gas bill! It will also help to burn off the extra candy calories!
Keep it up! Supporting an eco-friendly lifestyle should be a daily event, not an occasional act. With a little thought, and some guidance from the Rainforest Alliance, you can easily apply these green Halloween tips to your everyday life.
The Rainforest Alliance works with people whose livelihoods depend on the land, helping them transform the way they grow food, harvest wood and host travelers. From large multinational corporations to small, community-based cooperatives, businesses and consumers worldwide are involved in the Rainforest Alliance’s efforts to bring responsibly produced goods and services to a global marketplace where the demand for sustainability is growing steadily. For more information, visit www.rainforest-alliance.org.
Creepy Chocolate Cookies
1 1/2 cups all purpose or whole grain flour
3/4 cup unsweetened Rainforest Alliance Certified cocoa powder
1 1/4 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup of butter or nondairy buttery spread
1 1/4 cup unrefined sugar
1 egg or 1 tablespoon flaxmeal mixed with 3 tablespoons warm water
Halloween cookie cutters
- Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder and salt.
- In a medium-sized bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until smooth. Beat in the egg. Add in, gradually, the sifted ingredients to form a soft dough.
- Divide dough into 2 pieces. Flatten and wrap in plastic. Refrigerate for 2 hours.
- Preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
- On a lightly floured surface, roll dough to 1/8 inches in thickness.
- Cut into ghoulish shapes with cookie cutters.
- Place cookies 1 ½ inches apart on cookies sheets.
- Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the pre-heated oven. Allow to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.