GreenYour.com

Americans spend a spine-tingling $5 billion dollars annually on Halloween decorations and supplies.[1] This year, green "ghouls" and guys can summon the spirit of Mother Earth (and scream up some savings) by haunting their hallowed halls with "eeko"-friendly decor. Pitch those petrifying, polluting, petroleum-based plastic and bright lights which are thirsty to suck the life out of your batteries. Instead create dastardly decorations from recycled materials that are already lying lifeless around the house. But beware: don't let your decorations become trapped for eternity in the most ghoulish graveyard of all: the landfill. Bury them alive in storage boxes and bring them back from the dead to reuse them each and every year.

How to create an "eeko"-friendly haunted house

Choose from the following ideas—or develop some frighteningly creative ideas of your own—to turn your home into a horrifying haunted house, without making Mother Earth howl:

• Set an eerie ambience with eco-friendly candles (soy or beeswax), LED lights, or flash lights powered with rechargeable batteries
• Give your candles added Halloween flare by cutting out patterns in a paper bag, adding some sand to the bottom for stability and placing a votive candle in the center
• Make a graveyard out of old cereal boxes turned gravestones. Or, transform recycled cardboard into coffins, chains, or skeletons by cutting them to your own design and painting them with non-toxic paint
• Use old bed sheets or pillowcases to make ghosts by stuffing a t-shirt into the center and tying it off with a ribbon to create the head.
• Make paper chains out of old newspaper for a dangerous dungeon feel
• Roll old newspaper into a cone shape and paint it black to make a wicked witch's hat
• Use white spray paint to transform old stockings and the netting from orange bags into creepy cobwebs for your corners
• Cut up egg cartons to create bats or pumpkins
• Use old household items to make a scary skeleton mobile
• Give new life to plastic milk jugs with just a little paint to make a jack-o-lantern
• Paint spooky Halloween murals on your windows with non-toxic window paint
• Decorate with gourds, pumpkins, apples and other edible items that you can eat once the night is over
• Gather leaves and branches from the backyard

Find it! "Eeko"-friendly haunted house decor