Ghosts and ghouls, goblins and grools! What’s a grool you ask? I started saying great and ended up saying cool. Because Halloween is so great, and it has always been so cool!
Zero emissions is a goal of having exactly zero emissions during a certain period or by a deadline. Or, as is likely, as close as possible to the suggested deadline. How close is considered close enough? Well, sometimes, the answer to that question is much too scary even for this holiday.
But at least the heart is in the right place. One would hope. It wouldn’t be very useful if it were in their foot…. Here are some great ways to be much more efficient this Halloween. Don’t worry, it doesn’t involve walking around your home in the dark, with only a candle in your hand. That would barely give enough light so that you could really only see just a few feet ahead of you. Sometimes you could catch a flash of an object a little further away- if it‘s surface were glassy or mirrored. Maybe you have wood floors. That creak came from the hallway you just walked through a minute ago.
Don’t throw that rotten pumpkin in the trash! It’s delicious. Trees and bushes would eat it by the bushel if you offered it to them. Just find a space for its final resting place, get a hammer and smash it to bits! If you’ve got critters, tell ‘em to put on their rain boots and stomp on it for good measure. Cover it with perdy fall leaves, and let the other kind of critter- creepy-crawly wormies- finish it off. If you’re not keen on letting pumpkin flesh decompose in your backyard, a community garden would take it even if it were in a black plastic bag you pulled out of the trunk of your car. No questions asked.
Speaking of candles, the paraffin variety tends to leak silent killers into the air. Made from petroleum, they actually have claws made out of greenhouse gases, which they use to rip through the ozone, hoping to create a hole big enough so that your cat gets sucked up into the atmosphere and thrown into the dark, endless void that is outer space. Use beeswax candles instead! We totally are NOT biased. It’s just a coincidence that the swrm mascot is a bee. And that the entire swrm team has their bee costumes ready to go. Erm… LED lights make a nifty alternative to candles too! You don’t have to worry about your pumpkin getting too cozy with your candle. LED ’s come in all different types of colors, making these energy savers a great alternative for Christmas lighting.
That’s if you make it to Christmas. CERN scientist have yet to explain what causes the atmosphere to thin so much on Halloween, allowing witches and vampires and werewolves to pass through the portal between worlds. It’s like an eclipse, with the height of paranormal activity occurring precisely at 3:33 am on the evening between All Hallows Eve and November 1st, the Day of the Dead. Keep poltergeists at bay by weatherproofing your home. Creatures of the netherworld can slip through cracks, so put weather strips in your doorways, windows and anywhere else the chilly wind blows. This has the added benefit of reducing the workload of your furnace and heaters, saving you money, which you’ll need for all those Christmas gifts that you gotta buy. Cheer up! At least you survived Halloween.
If you follow this 3-step recipe for a Zero-Emissions potion, well, you’re still probably not actually at zero-emissions; the important thing is to keep reaching for it. That’s why October is Energy Awareness Month: awareness of a problem is always the first step to coming up with the solution.
Our mission at swrm is to help you discover how much energy you are consuming. Though part of the magic of Halloween is that your teeth are impervious to the sugar content of the goodies you consume, those goodies still have an energy footprint. Use the app to become aware of how much energy you’ve used this Halloween. Tally it up! You’ll find that a Snicker bar is 8.3 kWh, while a pumpkin is 12.5 kWh; once you’ve added up all the odds and ends, shoot for a smaller footprint next year.
Wishing you a safe and spooky Halloween, and that black cats stay out of your path.
BOO!
