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Frightfully Good: How to Share Your Values This Halloween

This post is part of our Conscious Consumerism series to encourage our readers to live – and buy – responsibly. As marketers in the purpose economy, we see it as our job to help people make purchasing decisions that align with their values and contribute to the greater good. Want to learn more about our mission? Download our Manifesto

Halloween is one of our favorite holidays. It’s a chance to dress up, an excuse to neglect your lawn (“We’re going for the creepy, overgrown haunted-house-lawn vibe”) and an opportunity to subject random children to your own preferences in sweets.

If you’re into conscious consumerism, you might already be thinking about the holiday as a chance to spread awareness of brands using business as a force for good. That said, depending on your budget, buying every witch, ghost and pumpkin a full-sized Fair Trade chocolate bar can get pricey.

We’ve broken out some treat options that do good beyond rewarding trick-or-treaters. The Halloween treats described in this post are all made by Certified B Corporations, so you can rest assured that they’re certified to meet rigorous standards of social and environmental performance, accountability and transparency.

For the really fearless among you, we’ve included printable notes that you can attach to the treats to spread awareness about the companies behind them. Click on a tag to open a printable pdf in a new window. *Remember to print on FSC-certified paper!

Regardless of how many visitors you expect and how much you’ve budgeted, you can ALWAYS force your beliefs on people by giving away candy. Have fun, and happy Halloween!

Is your company’s social impact Purpose strong, weak, or absent? Take the 4-minute Pulsecheck quiz and get your results right away!

Situation # 1: Low budget; expecting an absurdly high number of visitors

Solution:

Give out Tiny Tony’s!

Cost:

€14.31 (roughly $16.23) + shipping for roughly 140 chocolates

Rationale:

Tony’s Choclonely is dedicated to ending the cocoa industry’s dependence on slave labor in Ghana and the Ivory Coast. According to their website, around 460,000 people in the industry endure work conditions prohibited by law and 15,000 – 30,000 of them are children. By raising awareness, purchasing directly from farmers with slavery-free operations and sharing their best practices, Tony’s is working hard to prove that it’s possible to “establish a fair, honest and profitable chocolate business in West Africa.”

Tag:

Tonys (1)

Situation # 2: Medium-high budget; expecting a medium-high number of visitors (around 50)

Solution:

Alter Eco Tub of Truffles – Contains 60 pieces so you can give one truffle to each kid and still eat 10 yourself (no judgment here)

Cost:

$45 + shipping, but you can score 10% off if you sign up for their newsletter. *At the time of publication, the Tub of Truffles is on sale for $38.24!

Rationale:

Alter Eco works with small-scale farmers, helping them adopt Fair Trade and Organic practices to improve the quality of the food they produce and their quality of life. They also offset more carbon than they omit, use compostable packaging, and have basically every certification we’ve ever heard of: USDA Organic, Fair-Trade Certified, Fair for Life, Fairtrade, Fair Trade Federation, Non GMO Project Verified, Certified B Corporation, Carbon Neutral Product, San Francisco Green Business and Green America Certified Business.

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Alter Eco (1)

Situation # 3: Medium-high budget; expecting a medium-low number of visitors; don’t believe in giving kids candy

Solution:

Give out bags of Organic Sea Salt Popcorn from Whole Kids

Cost:

$45.40 + shipping for 24 bags of popcorn

Rationale:

You might think that kids get enough candy on Halloween. They might disagree, but you’re the one buying the treats! Providing healthy snacks from a company that does a lot of good is a great alternative to handing out candy. Whole Kids makes healthy snacks for kids using organic ingredients, no artificial colors, preservatives, flavors or other additives. They also award grants to support community groups dedicated to improving children’s health and run several “unjunk-ing” campaigns to promote healthy lifestyles for children.

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Whole Kids (1)

Situation # 4: Crazy high budget; you don’t care how many visitors are coming because you have a crazy high budget

Solution:

Buy a bunch of chocolate bars made by B Corps. Give them out. Revel in your goodness.*Also a good option for companies that want to treat their employees to something special on Halloween.

Cost:

Pretty high. Depending on where you shop, each bar could range from $2.70 – $6 plus shipping (unless you snag them from a B Corp-friendly retailer like Whole Foods). It’s not a cheap option, but hey – you’re the one with a crazy high budget!

Rationale:

Among “fun-sized” offerings, big bars stand out and make an impression. You also have several options, depending on the message you want to send and the cause you want to support:

Rescue Chocolate donates 100% of its net profits to animal rescue organizations. Different flavors support different animal-centered missions. For example, Mission Feral Fig raises awareness of feral cat colonies and Peanut Butter Pit Bull lets people know that pit bulls aren’t all dangerous doggies.

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Rescue (1)

Tony’s Chocolonely full-sized bars *See Situation # 2 for company info and tag

Five North Chocolate makes fair trade, organic chocolate bars with add-ins on the healthier side (think quinoa, flax and coconut). Having received (and swiftly devoured) a six-pack of bars before, we can attest to the fact that they are really delicious.

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SweetRiot (1)

It’s inspiring to see so many confectioners using their operations as a chance to do good and we hope the options we’ve provided inspire you to go for conscious candy this Halloween. If we missed any other treat-making social enterprises, please tell us about them in the comments below or let us know about them via twitter @RoundPegComm.

This post was originally published on October 21, 2015.

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RoundPeg helps purposeful companies build transformative relationships with their customers. Our Purpose is to challenge conspicuous consumption and make buying responsibly the norm. We are a certified B Corp and Benefit Corporation.
Comments
  • Mariana Hodges
    Reply
     

    What a great list! Sharing it around the office.

    • Alison Klein
      Reply
       

      Mariana — Thank you for spreading the message. Happy [almost] Halloween!

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