Happy Friday and Happy Halloween — we’re back with more Hot Spooky Bones. If you’ve already eaten handfuls of candy corn, don’t worry. You’re not alone.
Let’s get the most important stuff out of the way first:
What candy are you pulling out of the bowl before the treat-or-treaters arrive?
Safe space, but when you vote, you can see what everyone else thinks about Raisinets too.
Sunrise | oh my god 7:39 AM (just stay in bed) |
|---|---|
Sunset | 6:16 PM |
Moon stuff | Waxing Gibbous (69% visible). The next full moon is on Wed, Nov 5. |
Air quality | Good |
UVA football | Saturday at 3:45 PM vs Cal (away) |
Do one long thumb scroll for more Cville-specific updates like local events, cool houses, and pets to adopt.
🐶 Speaking of: Zoinks! This guy will shadow you from room to room and promise to be your trusty sidekick (German shepherd mix, 6 years, 63 pounds).
A year ago, I wrote a Hot Bones edition about Halloween candy wrappers. Here’s the gist:
Candy wrappers can’t be recycled by most municipal systems.
This is a bummer because Americans buy roughly 600 million pounds of candy every Halloween, and at least one pound is probably Raisinets.
Some schools and offices have a special recycling program in place to solve this, but I couldn’t find one in Charlottesville.
So I bought a Halloween candy recycling bag for $43 from a company called TerraCycle, which helps people and brands recycle hard-to-recycle things like shampoo bottles, lip balm tubes, baby cheese casings, and candy wrappers, so that they don’t end up straight in landfills.
I wrote that G and I planned to fill the bag with our candy wrappers — and offered to recycle anyone else’s wrappers who happened to be trick or treating near UVA. We’d send it to TerraCycle as soon as it was full.
Candy wrappers go in the bag and, after many more wrappers are collected and much science is done, TerraCycle transforms them into cool things like park benches and bike racks.
And that’s where the story stops.
To fill you in on what happened after the newsletter was published:
Halloween 2024 was a few days later.
We got 2 trick-or-treaters.
G and I ate a bunch of Snickers, drank some sad beer, and went to bed early.
The bag remained half full.
Fast forward to November 2024: The bag gains a few more wrappers on nights when we run out of real dessert options.
Winter 2025: The bag slowly grows. It now lives in our pantry, next to the remaining full bag of Halloween candy we never got to use because we live on a busy street that it turns out no trick-or-treaters want to visit.
Spring 2025: I open the pantry one morning and find it hidden behind cereal and oatmeal boxes. It’s still not full. I move it to our office as a reminder to myself to just send in the damn thing. I even add a note to my to-do list to mail it off. I’ve already paid for it after all.
Summer 2025: Frustrated with seeing “send candy bag to terracycle” at the bottom of my to-do list for months, I delete the note and tell myself it’s a task I don’t really need to deal with after all.
A few weeks later I get this from G in passing: “Hey what’s the deal with the wrapper bag?”
If you’re not familiar with the “hey what’s the deal …” phrase, it means you now have a 24-hour warning period before that “thing” becomes a relationship Mentos hovering above a 16-ounce bottle of Coke.
So I move the bag to our mail basket and bury it under New Yorkers and junk mail.
This is where the bag currently rests (although I have cleaned out the basket). Perfect timing for Halloween 2025. My plan all along.
Being reflective for a moment, I believe there are two reasons I haven’t sent the bag in.
Answer 1: Very easy. I’m a millenial and hate going to the post office.
Answer 2: The idea of sending in a half-full bag feels wasteful somehow, compounded by the very fact that the candy wrappers themselves feel incredibly wasteful. Not in a judgy way, just in a “hey I bought this candy and now I have to throw away part of it” kind of way.
It’s almost emotional. Seeing that little pile of tropical wrappers when I’m hunting for Starbursts in our 2024 Halloween candy bowl is frustrating on a direct and personal level. It’s not about the money or the bigger-picture planet stuff — it’s just not fun to see that waste. It feels icky.
What to do about The Waste Ick
First, reply to this email if you live in Charlottesville and want to add your candy wrappers to my TerraCycle bag before I send it out (it’s on my to-do list again). You can also buy your own bag (still $43 so take that, inflation) if you want to get rid of the wasteful feeling by Nov 1.
Second, I’ve got some ideas around preventing The Waste Ick around the house more broadly, beyond just candy. Here are three ways to start feeling better.
Kill the energy “vampires”
We’ve talked about this in Hot Bones before (see Midnight Cortados), but every appliance and piece of technology you plug into an outlet ends up leaking energy, even when you’re not using it, even when it’s turned off.
That includes big stuff like AC units, hot water heaters, and fridges, as well as TVs, speakers, stereos, hair dryers, microwaves, and coffee makers.
It doesn’t add up to that much waste (keeping our coffee pot plugged in year round costs us roughly $5.88), but again, it’s more about the principle of the thing. Why would I keep something running if I’m not using it? That feels wasteful.
Solutions:
Unplug your coffee maker when you’re not using it.
Same for toasters, blenders, other countertop appliances, and all your tech like printers and TVs.
You can even turn your laptop off at night. Like, click the SHUT DOWN option. For real. This is possible.
Estimates vary, but the consensus is that unplugging these “vampires” that suck up energy can save you somewhere between $100 and $200 every year. It may also make you feel less wasteful.
Swap out plastic baggies
Plastic baggies may be the most toxic relationship I’ve ever been in. One day I’m all good to stuff my sandwich in our circular Pyrex dishes and say no thank you to all of Ziplock’s microplastics and money thrown in the trash after getting a single use. And other days I’m rooting behind the tinfoil and parchment paper, desperate for a plastic baggie to keep my chargers organized before a long trip.
But on rational days, I can’t shake the feeling that each plastic bag I buy gets tossed in the trash within 24 hours. Again, not a huge financial cost, but it just feels wasteful to see them flutter into our kitchen bin.
Solution: Wrapping things like sandwiches in dish towels is a good stopgap for how to transport my work lunch, as long as I remember not to put it in my backpack and then shove my laptop on top.
Another thing to try are reusable Stasher bags and lids, which are made from silicon (basically superheated sand) and are dishwasher and microwave safe. (Not an ad btw, just a cool product that lasts a long time.)
Go one step beyond shaking your head at the junk mail pile
Apparently 62% of all US household mail is junk mail. And while junk mail is great for burying your TerraCycle candy wrapper bag in the mail basket, that’s pretty much it. And roughly 80 - 100 million trees are cut down annually to print all those free cruise offers.
The Washington Post’s Climate Coach has a great column on how to stop getting junk mail. The biggest bang for your buck is to use the Association of National Advertisers’ DMAchoice tool (here), which should get you out of about 80% of your junk mail. It costs $6 for 10 years.
Bonus: Chuck the pumpkins somewhere nice
One more Halloween-themed rec here. G and I likely spent at least $50 on our front porch pumpkin cornucopia this year, and we’re going to need to toss them out soon, before the squirrels descend. They were nice while they lasted, but again, more waste.
Most cities have a composting system set up for seasonal oddities like pumpkins and Christmas trees (a quick google should provide answers). In Cville, we’ve got 3+ options to prevent The Waste Ick:
Toss them in your Black Bear Composting bin, if you’re a subscriber.
Bring them to the McIntire Recycling Center from Nov 6 - 11 and partake in the “great pumpkin smash.” This composting service is free for Cville and Albemarle residents.
Brave the students and compost your large pumpkins at UVA’s Lawn Room 35.
More locations here for small gourds. (And maybe Raisinets if you ask nicely.)
Mountains, white wine, and loaded hashbrowns from Bar Botanical — also known as the Crozet Holy Trinity.
🎨 Artsy reminder: This weekend is the Fall Art Tour in Rappahannock County (free on Saturday and Sunday, plus get your leaf peeping and apple picking fix).
🎷 Jazz parade for democracy (and to boogie): Head over to Ting Pavilion on Saturday starting at 3pm to hear from local leaders and connect with Indivisible Charlottesville as well as other local nonprofits that provide vital services to our community.
👻 Ding ding, ghost on your left: Don’t put your costumes away after tonight. PEC’s annual spooky halloween bike ride is this Sunday starting at 3:30pm. Prizes will be awarded for the best costume and most tricked-out bike.
🏠 Farmhouse of the week: 1900s historic house with pine floorboards that Chip and Joanna Gaines would die for, plus a questionable kitchen upgrade ($435k, 3 beds, 1 bath on 2 acres in Earlysville).
🏡 Cool rental of the week: What’s better than 1 farmhouse listing? TWO farmhouse listings! This one’s on a vineyard north of Ivy (4 beds, 2 baths, $2,850/month).
📚 Great read of the week: For all my citibike fans out there, here are the best ways to hack your next ride through NYC (including the Dachshund Dash).
💼 Job of the week: Senior Specialist for Social Media at Scout Motors, the EV company reinventing the iconic truck (remote with HQ in Tysons, $110k - $135k)
Have an event or rec you’d like to share? Hiring? Interested in advertising?
Share any and all info here.
