Kickstart: More inclusive treats

For Halloween this year, a big name in entertainment and retail is getting involved in the adaptive costume business.

The Walt Disney Co. is selling a range of costumes featuring princesses, superheroes and Star Wars characters — Disney owns the Star Wars and Marvel entertainment brands — that turn wheelchairs into carriages and spaceships with the use of stretchy fabric, rigid plastics and plastic pipe supports.

The costumes are also designed with openings that make them easier to fit around medical support equipment.

"With today's announcement, we're better able to meet the needs of more of our guests, and we're excited to see this inspired collection continue to grow," said Stephanie Young, president of consumer products, games and publishing for Disney.

While there have been some people who make individual costumes and small companies making custom adaptive costumes, Disney's involvement makes it possible for kids to trick-or-treat as an official Cinderella or Buzz Lightyear or Black Panther, just like their friends and siblings.

As you finalize your Halloween plans and decorating, the consulting group Finch Insights Inc. has some advice about sustainable trick-or-treating: Go ahead and use plastic pumpkin buckets for candy with a clean conscience.

Plastic pumpkins, Finch says, have the lowest carbon footprint for pumpkin-themed Halloween decor — and that includes real pumpkins — if they're used year after year.

Ceramic pumpkins, which have grown in popularity for decorations, have a carbon footprint that is eight times larger than a plastic pumpkin, due to size, weight and manufacturing.

And the carbon footprint of real pumpkins, including everything from planting and transportation to the methane they release in landfills if they're not composted, is four times higher than reusable plastic ones, the group says.

"Long story short, reusable plastic has a different environmental impact than single-use plastic, and when choosing what kind of pumpkin to spring for this Halloween, we have to consider how long we will have it, how many times we will use it and how we'll dispose of it," Finch wrote. "Plastic isn't always the skeleton in the closet that we think it is."

This item isn't Halloween related, but it is pretty cool and worth checking out if you didn't spot it last week.

Frank Esposito writes about how 3D printing specialist Stratasys Ltd. has teamed with the design team at Paisley Park in suburban Minneapolis for the museum honoring the music icon Prince.

Paisley Park came to Stratasys looking for a way to showcase the musician's vast array of shoes. What the company created was a complex, custom display within a 3D printed baby grand piano complete with replicas of Prince's guitars for legs.

"The level of 3D printing innovation on display at Paisley Park is incredible," said Pat Carey, senior vice president of strategic growth for Stratasys. "In everything we created for this exhibit we pushed the boundaries of our technology."

Check out Frank's blog for more.