£50million of Halloween-themed items thrown away every year after being used just once

Almost £50million Halloween items are thrown away by Britons each year after just one use.

New research found 46 million products, such as decorations and costumes, are binned - equivalent to 3.2 items for every single child in the country. purchase an average of 10 Halloween themed items every year - but 76% of Britons who purchase items for Halloween admit to throwing away decorations, masks and themed cutlery or cups after .

Out of these, 39% do so because they believe the items are cheap and flimsy. Almost one in five polled - 17% - even admitted to throwing away items because they’re too scary to simply have lying around the house, despite there being nothing wrong with them.

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By comparison, 73% of people who celebrate Halloween say they reuse tree decorations they buy on any given year. , who commissioned the polling, is now calling on British consumers to consider buying or reusing second hand Halloween items in order to save both money and the planet.

Hannah Rouch, consumer expert at Gumtree said: “With Halloween growing in popularity every year, it’s become synonymous with cheap, themed items that cannot be reused. It’s shocking to learn that 46 million Halloween items are thrown away after a single use each year - three items for every child in the UK.

"With all of these items contributing to an already stretched landfill, we need to be reusing what we have and think second hand first at all times of the year.”

Halloween spending in the UK has quadrupled over the last decade since 2013 to an estimated £1 billion. The biggest purchases are bags of plastic-wrapped sweets, with 85% of people buying these, followed by decorations, 74% and costumes, 70%.