Trash is still haunting us in the Great Lakes State. And Saturday is the first-annual Halloween Costume Swap Day.

No need to get a card for this one. The Oct. 9 “holiday” is being organized by Green Halloween, KIWI magazine, and Swap.com. There’s an online directory to look for swaps in your community. If you don’t find one, feel free to organize your own costume trade party.
Sierra Club, which is promoting Halloween Swap Day on its blog, says that 25 million kids celebrate Halloween in the U.S. If half of them exchanged costumes, they’d cut landfill waste by more than 6,000 tons.

You can do it on Saturday, or any day, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is that you re-use a costume rather than throwing one out and buying a new polyester outfit for the kids.

I guess costume swapping isn’t a new idea. I remember letting my brother use my Frankenstein mask the year after I did. And my Dracula cape also was passed on down.

There aren’t any Halloween swaps near me in Michigan, but the elementary school down the road is holding a Halloween costume fundraiser.

There’s another idea: Donate your old costumes to a nonprofit that can sell them to raise funds. And stop over and buy a new (to you) costume for the kids.

— Photo: peasap via Flickr.