No tricks, all treats at the Ultimate Halloween Swap!

All right. Maria, thank you. Okay, so what happens to kids' Halloween costumes the morning after? The candy's the focus, right? The costumes, not so much. The waste that comes with Halloween helped inspire our next guest's program called the Ultimate Halloween Swap. Such a great idea. Since costumes are made out of synthetic or other materials that are tough to recycle, sustainable fashion advocate Lexi Silverstein came up with the Ultimate Halloween swap. Such a good idea. It lets families drop off costumes they're done with and then pick out new to them ones for free. Lexi's here now to talk all about it. What a great idea. Thank you. I think about this every single year. I'm like, we have these new Halloween costumes we wear. For like a couple of hours. Literally a few hours. For a couple of hours, not even the whole day. A picture and then we're done. We're done. Okay, so this was your idea, right? How long ago and where did it come from? Yeah, well, I love Halloween, first of all. It's so much fun, you get to dress up and eat candy, what's better than that? But I found two main issues with it. How expensive it was, how much outrageous amounts of money we're spending on it. And then the amount of environmental waste that it causes. So about 20 years ago, people were spending $50 on Halloween. And nowadays, we're spending more than double than that. And that's real money at a time where everything is so expensive from our gas, to our groceries, to our Halloween costumes. And then not only that, but we're wearing it, we're buying it, and then we're wearing it once and we're getting rid of it. So it's unsustainable for the environment and unsustainable for our bank accounts. And so I came up with the ultimate Halloween swap. I started it last year and this year we've grown to bigger and better. And yeah, you can drop off any previous Halloween costumes you might have sitting around in your house in your closet. And then you can go and also pick some up for free. So really tackling those two issues. That's a great idea. Yeah, do you do it before Halloween? Cuz people are looking for their new costumes now. When can they go out and go and swap stuff? Or what if you have nothing to swap? Can they go out and then see what you've got in storage? Completely, so it's all throughout the month of October and then a week after. And so if you are looking for a Halloween costume, totally feel free to stop by any of our partner locations, which is Heal the Bay Aquarium under the Santa Monica Pier. The Opera, Santa Barbara, Occidental College, and Girls Inc Los Angeles that has two participating elementary schools. And you can drop off your costumes and pick them up for free, and you do not have to drop off a costume. So you don't have to necessarily swap it if you don't- Yeah, totally feel free to stop by and pick them up for free. Honestly, I have a mound of Halloween costumes under my bed. I don't know why I saved them, but maybe for that reason, just in case anybody else might I want to wear them, so you can go and essentially just give this place your Halloween costume, but maybe not take a costume of your own, right? Yeah, you don't have to. Essentially donate, right? Go donate. I will be sorting them at the end of the year, and if they are able to be reused, they will be donated for years to come. Yeah. So hopefully that Halloween costume can be worn for two Halloweens or three Halloweens or 20 Halloweens. I can't wait to see somebody walking around in one of those gas station wacky waving balloons because I have one of those. Oh, my gosh. It depends on where you get them from, but they're expensive. They're so, so, so expensive. And most of these Halloween costumes, like 80% of them, are made up of polyester or plastic. And so when you get rid of them, they're going to haunt our landfills for centuries to come. So this is a great way of keeping it in circulation, making sure you're getting as much use of it as possible, while also making it more accessible to everybody. Because Halloween is so fun. I see this after the West Hollywood Carnival because I live in that neighborhood and after the carnival, like literally the morning after there are just costumes all over the streets. I can't believe that people are just like wearing it and they're like, I'm done. I'm just going to throw this off. What are we doing? I also can't believe that, that you said you sort all of this stuff yourself. You're like a one person operation or like you've got to go through all of this stuff. I go through all the costumes myself. We were very lucky to have the Los Angeles Clippers drop off some costumes like January, February of this year. And I sorted through all of them. We got some really amazing donations and then I've put them all in the boxes so that some of those are available for pickup at the donation places. And I got to see firsthand some of the kids going through. Yeah. It's really amazing, you can see the joy on their face and they're like, mom, can I take this home? And they're They're like, how much is it? And I'm like, girl, it's free. And then on top of that, I've had parents that have said that they were really worried about having to spend money for Halloween. And so that this has been a really helpful and amazing thing. I feel like Halloween is more, it's just getting more and more popular every year. Trick or treat's huge. But then Halloween itself is like, you know, you're talking about summerween, like you're creeping into other seasons. It's just become like a huge business. Yeah. Especially like right now, like you were saying, gas prices are so high. people just do not have the money for these expensive Halloween costumes. And that's what we're really trying to expand to. So I really want this to be more than just for Halloween. When you think of the times of years where there's all these items that we use once, like graduation gowns or just items that we're spending a lot of money. So back to school season, back to work season, winter coat season, prom. So my goal is to grow this and have, first of all, have drop-off locations all around America or even the world, if I'm, you know, getting really asked. Those are goals. Those are goals. But yeah, I think that we're trying to make it bigger and better. And if you want to partner, totally feel free to reach out to me on my Instagram. Excellent. Lexi, thank you. And by the way, right here on your screen, this is where you can check out the ultimate Halloween swap. Heal the Bay Aquarium, Opera Santa Barbara, Occidental College, Girls Inc. L.A., Knox Elementary and 93rd Street Elementary. the hours right there on your screen. The program lasts long after Halloween, swap days now through November the 6th, drop off boxes will be available through select locations. And again, there's her Instagram, Here's her website first of all, LexiSilverstein.com and then her Instagram is Lexi Silverstein. What are some of the cute costumes you're seeing this year that that you've seen dropped off, anything really unique? We saw a huge blow up pumpkin at Heal the Bay Aquarium and I was like, oh my gosh, I really hope someone snaps that, that would be really fun. We saw a lot of Star Wars costumes. Oh, of course. Timeless. So many options, yeah. Yep, a lot of timeless costumes. Well, it's our story. Great idea. Thank you.