There are many ways to have a green Halloween, from making your own eco-friendly decorations to handing out fair-trade Endangered Species chocolates to your neighborhood trick-or-treaters. Here are three steps to greening your Halloween Jack o’ Lantern.

3 Steps to a Green Jack o’ Lantern

1. Buy a locally-grown pumpkin. Just like with the food we eat, buying locally-grown pumpkins supports the local economy and the environment, especially if you can find an organic pumpkin patch. Many small family farmers depend on their Halloween pumpkin patch festivities to supplement their normal farm income. Some farms have rather over-the-top festivals with rides, bouncy pumpkins, corn mazes and more, which are of course great for entertaining your kids, too. Remember to buy extra, smaller pumpkins for eating (see step 3).

2. Use non-toxic soy or beeswax candles. Parrafin wax, which most candles are now made from, is derived from petroleum and emits carcinogens when burned — producing some of the same toxins as burning diesel fuel (contributing to indoor air pollution), while the artificial fragrances can irritate asthma and allergies. Soy candles are cleaner burning and often use natural fragrances if any, while old-fashioned beeswax candles are the purist choice and are also clean-burning and drip-free. I found beeswax votives and tea lights at a local home goods store, Bungalow. The Big Green Purse has links to a few other places to find soy or beeswax candles.

3. Eat your pumpkins! Many farmers sell smaller sugar pumpkins, or other varieties, which are ideal for cooking. The green pumpkin pictured above is a Cushaw pumpkin, a traditional pie variety. Large carving pumpkins have rather tough meat, but of course you can still roast the seeds. To make your own pumpkin puree, bake the whole pumpkin at 350 degrees for 90 minutes. Allow it to cool, then peel, remove the goop (reserving the seeds for roasting), and mash or blend the pulp until smooth. You can freeze the pulp for later use, and simply use it in your favorite recipes in place of canned pumpkin. (Avoiding that BPA-lining in canned foods.)

For more ideas, visit Green Halloween, Nature Moms‘ Eco-Friendly Halloween, or Green Me’s list of HFCS-free Halloween treats. And if you really want to shock your friends, check out these anti-environment costume ideas.

I recently attended BlogHer’s DC conference, where I was thrilled to meet up with a group of green supermoms whose blogs I frequently turn to to help make sense of the latest environmental and green parenting news. Confused about bottled water having the same cancer-causing contaminants as tap water? Manufacturers voluntarily creating BPA-free bottles yet the FDA says they still can’t tell if any thing’s wrong with it? (What’s a little extra risk for altered brain development, anyway.) And what about lead? These women are devoting their spare time (which means giving up sleep, as my fellow parent readers know!) to uncovering the truth behind green claims and controversies and sharing tips to help other parents make smart choices.

The Green Parent Jenn Savedge wrote the book, literally, on eco-friendly parenting. Diane MacEachern is one of Glamour magazine’s 70 leading women environmentalists and the author of the book and blog The Big Green Purse, showing how to use the power of your checkbook to push corporate America in the right direction. Organic Mania helps you make sense of all things green and organic. The Smart Mama, armed with her trusty XRF toy-testing gun, is a walking encyclopedia on toxins found in the home and in children’s toys. Green & Clean Mom makes green living “sassy, sexy and fun.” And there’s a new group effort from my friend formerly known as Mama Bird, at The Green Phonebooth. If you only click one of these links - though I encourage you to bookmark or subscribe to them all! - make it Jess’s write-up of the Smart Mama’s tests on some of her own kid’s toys and other items you literally carry every day, like car keys. It’s a scary, contaminated world out there, but these women are making the world cleaner for our kids, one blog post at a time.

Want more? Find their books at your local bookseller:

The Green Parent

Big Green Purse

Now while I generally try to avoid foods with artificial colors, I make exceptions several times a year for holidays and birthdays. I did make “brown velvet” cupcakes for my son’s first birthday, though, when an attempt to use natural red dye turned out unsuccessful. (Apparently natural dyes rarely hold up to baking.) Frankly, I hadn’t even thought of the chemicals in Easter egg dye until seeing this Slashfood mention of an article from Plenty on DIY, non-toxic egg dyes.

I’ll probably still go with convenience this year - especially when the boy isn’t even a big egg eater - but we will use our cage-free, hormone-free, vegetarian-fed eggs, at least. And maybe I’ll try this some year when I have a little more time! Happy Easter!