“The lightbulb moments are the ones we truly cherish. Watching a first-time customer slowly walk through our store, in awe of all of the low-waste products and refill opportunities, I can see her thinking about what containers she has at home to bring in and reuse.”

How scary? Imagine this: an estimated 7 million Halloween costumes are thrown away annually in the UK (according to this survey), where Halloween spending is around $850 million. In the US, estimated spending on Halloween is set to hit a record $10.1 billion, so it’s likely that 12 times as many costumes will be thrown out this November in the US! Can you visualize 84 million Halloween costumes going to landfills? And 83% of them are polyester (plastic)! Yikes!

Susan Chainey tells the story of her first visit to a Repair Fair.

The new Executive Director of Reuse Alliance, Phoebe Schenker, shares the many reasons to love reuse, and some plans for the future of Reuse News.