Green Living: Fairtrade Halloween

The Natural Confectionery Company offers sweets that contain no artificial colours or flavours. Rather than doling out holier-than-thou lumps that taste of cardboard, the sweets are as edible as they are ethical.

Snakes, bears and dinosaurs are just some of the shapes you can choose from. Kids will love the flavours while grown-ups will be reassured by the lack of E numbers.

The big news on the sustainable sweetie front is that Cadbury is supporting Fairtrade farmers in their Dairy Milk bars. Growers in Ghana are being supported by the Cadbury Cocoa Partnership to get a fair price for their cocoa beans.

The company is also investing in India and the Dominican Republic and in all plans to invest £30million over the next 10 years to ensure a better deal for farmers.

However, if it's a real blast from the past you're after, you will have to head online. Stockley's Sweets near Blackburn (stockleyssweets.co.uk) offers a mouth-watering array of traditional delights, such as cola cubes, pear drops and chocolate limes. All are made using Fairtrade ingredients and they're guaranteed to keep even the most ghoulish youngster quiet for at least five minutes.

Times have changed over the past few decades and Halloween is probably never going to be the innocent evening of fun it once was.

At least thinking of slightly healthier options to hand out to the kids may ease your conscience a bit, or at least make the task of cleaning egg yolk from your front door a bit more bearable.

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