Going Green Halloween - Trick or Treat Bags

Back in the day, when I was knee-high to a grasshopper and trick or treating myself, I'd use whatever mom provided to carry the loot of my Halloween eve.

It didn't really matter too much as long as it held candy, right? I would be a LITTLE picky frowning upon a plain paper bag, but our local A&P would usually provide paper bags (like the one to the left) with a trick or treat/halloween logo on them. As long as we bought groceries that month, I'd have something.
It'd be black and orange and brown and really just needed to survive the night.

Well here we are in the our-planet-is-screwed aughty-aughts and we need to be a bit more ecologically conscious. So time to go green this Halloween and get yourself a reusable bag. Thanks to the wonders of the wide wide world o' webs, you've got a ton of options out there, but here is a Halloween Addict's picks for this year...

As you've heard me say time and again: I like the timeless American Halloween iconography. So the bags to the left here are some nice ones from tendertreasures.com featuring just that.
They sport all my qualifications: black, orange, and a bunch of Halloween standards such as silhouetted witches, spiders, ghosts, graveyards, spooky trees and skulls.
But what makes these bags stand out from the rest is that the white parts GLOW IN THE FREAKIN' DARK!

If you remember anything, remember this:
THINGS THAT GLOW IN THE DARK ARE AWESOME.

And we all know how much safer that makes them too. If you can be seen, you'll be safer walking around in the dark. Just bring a digital camera flash to charge them up as you go.
So these bags are under the guise of safety but really under the veil of cool.

The trick (ha!) to buying a good trick or treat bag is to get something that's timeless in its coolness. Not only for your own use but to pass along.
For example: your kid might be WAY into "Barry the Farting Otter" or whatever the latest animated flavor to come out of Nickelodeon is. But kids are fickle. And today's "Barry the Farting Otter" is tomorrow's Cabbage Patch Kid (yes I know they're 'back,' smartass).

A great example is this plain skull bag from chicbynature.com.
Simple. Cool.
You could use this baby year 'round.
Trick or treating in October, hardcore rockstar groceries the rest of the year.

Don't like your groceries with the visage of death on the front?
Ok, I can respect that.
Well you can't go wrong with a simple jack o' lantern like the one offerred by plumparty.com, in my opinion. When your kids get too old (or too 'cool') to trick or treat, it's easier to pass off/recycle/donate to Goodwill a jack o' lantern bag or some other timeless image.

Real Halloween Addicts will use a scary bag throughout the year wearing it like a badge of courage and saving hundreds of paper and plastic bags a year. Because of the repeated use and the fact that a watermelon can weigh more than a Snickers King Size, you might need a fabric a bit more durable than felt.

Check out this monster tote on Cafe Press. Timeless AND durable with retro Halloween images.
Or heck, Cafe Press is so easy to use you can design your own bag and slap whatever favorite image on the front to have in durable beige.

For something much less imposing for the little tykes check out this felt jack o' lantern from williamssonoma.com that you can get emblazoned with a piece of flair: your embroidered name.
I recommend frightening others with evil laden names like "Damian," "Malachai" or "Alucard" but, hey, "Donny" can be scary too.

When all is said and done, whatever bag you get before Halloween is just that: a bag.
If you order early (as you should) you've got nothing but some fabric with a handle until the candy shows up on October 31st.
So why not spice it up with this fantastic deal from toxictoons.com!

For only 30 bucks you get an awesome black and orange trick or treat bag with Toxic Tooned versions of Frankenstein, the Wolfman, The Mummy, a witch and a bat; a refrigerator magnet; a signed poster; an activity book; a CD of spooky songs; stickers; AND a spooky postcard! Now THAT is fun! Plenty of stuff to keep you busy until you can go knocking on doors demanding sugary goodness.

So there you have it. Many choices for saving the planet one Autumn night at a time.