So I find myself wondering what to do about Halloween this year. No, not the typical Christian “should I celebrate it or not?” dilemma (more on this on a couple of weeks), but more of a quandary as to what sort of candy to hand out. Unless you are an evil grinch (or a fundamentalist Christian) you give out candy at Halloween. It’s the one night of the year when you are guaranteed to actually meet your neighbors as people get pulled out of the safety of their suburban fortresses by the munchkins dressed as pirates, superheros, and the cast of High School Musical. So I can’t not give out candy.

But I’m facing an ethical dilemma. What do I give? I refuse to support human trafficking and child slavery by buying chocolate from one of the big name distributors. And as the buzz around the new documentary The Price of Sugar raises awareness of slave conditions inflicted on Haitians in the production of our sugar, I don’t want to just go with pure sugar stuff either (and of course trying to avoid high fructose corn syrup as well). It would be easier to be a hypocrite, but that’s not sitting well with me. So that means I need to find fairly traded organic Halloween candy to give out this year.

Halloween is a $2 Billion dollar a year industry for candy and the average household spends around $17 each year on the candy supply to give out. To break it down – each piece of mini brand name candy costs you between 8-13 cents and the “fun size” pieces are between 20-30 cents each. Depending on the size of your neighborhood, that adds up. When I first started searching for fair trade Halloween candy a few years ago, the cheapest stuff I found in my search was $.50 a piece. I realized that attempting to have an ethical and green Halloween could really cost me. So at the time I turned to the internet.

Thanks to the groundwork done by the wonderful Candy Blog I found what I was looking for. While there doesn’t appear to be loads of options out there, there are some pretty good choices available. Apparently Global Exchange carries an entire Fair Trade Halloween Kit full of candy, decor, and info postcards. Pretty spiffy. I’m also a fan of their fair trade gold coins which will go well with the pirate theme Emma is insisting upon this year. Also available are Endangered Species Bug Bites. These mini-chocolate bars come in milk and dark chocolate varieties and are high on the yummy scale. I let Emma try one and asked if if she thought other kids would like them. She said, “no, just Emma, I eat them all.” We’re working on the sharing thing. Plus each piece comes with a bug trading card which I think are rather fun. If you are looking to avoid chocolate altogether, Yummy Earth carries organic lollipops and hard candy in a variety of interesting flavors (watermelon, pomegranate…). And of course, the Natural Candy Store carries all sorts of fairly traded, organic, and allergen free options.

But in addition to these online options, I am beginning to see some in store possibilities available this year. My local Whole Foods is offering individually wrapped organic gummy bear packages as well as large bags of the yummy Earth lollipops. Ten Thousand Villages carries bite size chocolate bars. It’s a start at least, and hopefully each year other stores will join in green Halloween offerings.

(this is a revision of a post that first appear at onehandclapping)