This Halloween WEPA launched a campaign to encourage the local community to make more sustainable, nature-friendly decorating choices. In 2023 Roy Morgan Research estimated that Halloween-related spending increased by 14% on the year prior. Half of the 5.3million Australian participants were buying costume related items and over one third spending on home decorations. That’s potentially a lot of single-use plastic entering our waste stream and landfill after the party is over.

Our primary target is the increasingly popular choice to ‘decorate’ garden shrubs, trees and fences with synthetic spiderweb to celebrate Halloween. In Australia the Halloween season coincides with springtime when nesting birds and insects are particularly active. There have been reports of birds, bats and insects becoming entangled in the fake webs and it’s very harmful to fledglings when carried back into nests. This non-biodegradable material also adds to the plastic pollution load through landfill or micro-plastics in our waterways when it escapes down stormwater drains.

Our community engagement campaign consists of:

• An educational flyer for display and letterboxing – distributed to known local Halloween ‘hot spots’
• Social media posts and engaging with related online conversations in community groups
• A booklet of spooky DIY crafting ideas to distribute to local schools and youth-focused organisations. This is underway and will be a key action for Halloween 2026.

Below is our single A4 flyer – click the image to download it. We also created an eco-friendly version with 2 flyers per A4 page to reduce paper use, which members can find here to distribute around their neighbourhood.

We would like to thank Mayor Taylor for promoting a greener Halloween and helping to spread the message about the ecological damage caused by synthetic web in not just one, but two interviews with ABC Radio Sydney.

We are also pleased to see that the idea seems to have gained traction this year, with an article in The Sydney Morning Herald that highlighted a University led study of bird nests. Researchers found that by 2018 around one third of the material in nests was man-made and 25% was plastic.

Special thanks also goes to WEPA committee member and Willoughby councillor, Kristina Dodds, for raising this issue at Council via a question with notice which has been followed up by contact from a number of media outlets.

We will continue to encourage Green Halloween celebrations as an ongoing WEPA initiative.