The Brief

Orange County officials are demanding the refund of millions in tax dollars that county Supervisor Andrew Do gave to a nonprofit linked to his daughter — saying Viet America Society has failed to show it actually did the work it was paid to do.

The repayment demands come shortly after the nonprofit failed to meet another deadline to submit a long-awaited audit, which was supposed to answer how the money was spent.

The new details are outlined in letters obtained by LAist. They disclose that last week, VAS fired the auditors it hired for the audit, the day after those auditors said they would officially find that the group failed to follow requirements to track what it did with the money.

The $2.2 million demanded to be returned was directed by Do to VAS to feed needy seniors during the pandemic. The letters say the group has failed to show that the meals were handed out as required by the county’s contract.

Do chose the group for funding from January 2021 through May 2022, without public votes naming the vendor. Some of the money was granted under the county’s emergency authority to issue contracts nearly a year into COVID-19, and the rest was federal pandemic response funding supervisors granted themselves authority to spend without having to name the recipients on public agendas.

Public records show VAS was led on and off by Do’s now 22-year-old daughter Rhiannon Do. The family ties were not publicly disclosed when Supervisor Do directed the taxpayer money to the group, and wasn’t revealed publicly until reporting by LAist. State law does not require such a disclosure, although a bill making its way through the state legislature that was spurred by LAist’s investigation would change that.

The letters, obtained through a public records request, also raise concerns about “questionable” payments made to Rhiannon Do and to another business where she was listed as an officer. The nonprofit has refused to explain those and other payments, according to the letters.

The refund demand

In all, LAist has reported that Do directed at least $13.5 million in taxpayer dollars to Viet America Society since it was formed in 2020 most of which was given to the group after his daughter was first listed as an officer on government filings. The letters, which were sent to VAS last week, show the county has ordered VAS to reimburse $2.2 million — the entire amount of two contracts awarded to the group to feed seniors during the pandemic.

“Due to VAS’s failure to substantiate the work performed under the Contract, the County is requiring full reimbursement,” states one of the county’s letters, all of which are dated July 26.

“Payment is due within 30 days, but no later than Monday, August 26, 2024,” it added. An address was then listed for sending the payment.

Additionally, the county is demanding reimbursement of another $1 million Do gave to a different group, Hand to Hand Relief Organization. A significant portion of that money was routed to VAS, according to county spokespeople and a financial ledger reviewed by LAist.

Messages for comment were not returned by Supervisor Do, his daughter Rhiannon Do, Viet America Society leader Peter Pham, or the group’s attorney, Sterling Scott Winchell.

Supervisor Do has declined multiple interview requests since LAist began investigating the contracts late last year. He has told other outlets that LAist’s reporting had errors but has not provided evidence of any errors or requested any corrections.

On July 3, Winchell told LAist that the audit was “almost done” and would take just “a few” more days. He said the meals were provided, but that the nonprofit had to create documents to show the auditors what happened with the money.

“The issue has been they haven’t kept the normal accounting for what they’ve done,” he said at the time. “So they’ve had to basically create the…documentation in the form that an accountant would want to watch and see for an audit.”

Hand to Hand’s leader, Thanh Huong Nguyen, also did not return messages for comment. County officials wrote that Hand to Hand had failed to respond at all to the county’s document demands over the past few months to show what happened with the money.

‘Red flags’

Eric Sussman, a UCLA accounting professor, after LAist read him the county’s letters to VAS, called the findings full of “red flags.”

“At best, it reflects extraordinarily sloppy record keeping, insufficient policies and procedures at the nonprofit to comply with underlying standards, prevent misstatements of financial reporting and so forth,” Sussman said.

“I don’t think it would shock this accounting expert, or any other accounting experts, that there may be some at best, negligence, at worst, fraud.”

Do didn’t disclose daughter’s role

The earmarking of the millions for meal funding was first brought to light by an LAist investigation into Do’s awarding of contracts to VAS without disclosing his family connection. He directed most of the $13.5 million identified by LAist using a secretive process where contracts do not appear on public meeting agendas.

In emails to LAist, Rhiannon Do has denied serving as an officer or having any role in the meal funding at issue or the financial side of the organization. But she has not answered requests to explain public records that contradict her claims. Those records include a contract she signed as group’s president, and meeting minutes showing her as an officer and director.

The bill inspired by LAist’s investigation was approved unanimously by the state Senate and now working its way through the Assembly. It would make it illegal for state and local officials to knowingly award contracts that involve their adult children. A news conference about it was held Friday.

Details of the missed audit 

The county’s demand for full repayment of $2.2 million covered by two contracts comes after VAS failed for years to meet audit requirements under both the county contract and federal law.

After pressure from O.C. officials, the group did eventually hire auditors in April, and told the county the audit would be finished by June 30, according to emails and the county letters.

That deadline also passed with no finished audit. And according to the letters, the group’s story changed.

Leading up to the June 30 deadline, the nonprofit assured the county it was providing the documents auditors would need to finish their work, according to the county letters and emails reviewed by LAist.

But after the deadline passed, VAS acknowledged for the first time that the auditors couldn’t finish their work because VAS “had failed to provide significant amounts of information,” the county letters state.

At a meeting last week, the auditors told the county they were planning to officially find that VAS failed to properly track what it did with county dollars and had “problematic” accounting of how many meals it was providing.

The next day, VAS fired the auditors, according to the county letters.

That makes it hard to know whether the group actually did what it was paid to do, the county wrote.

“VAS’s decision to terminate the auditor after receiving the negative information undermined the County’s efforts to determine the extent to which VAS performed,” states one of the letters.

[Read the county’s letters demanding repayment from Viet America Society, and to read the letter to Hand to Hand Relief Organization.]

‘Unexplained transactions’ and ‘questionable costs’

In its letters last week, the county raised concerns about a series of financial transactions that “VAS has refused to provide explanations or supporting documentation for.”

These “unexplained transactions” raise “concerns of potential commingling of funds and questionable costs,” the county wrote.

Among them:

• $18,000 paid to Rhiannon Do
• $200,000 paid to Behavioral Health Solutions, a private mental health company whose officers were listed as Rhiannon Do and two other VAS leaders
• Over $480,000 in “Food Supply” expenses
• $1.2 million in revenue listed as coming from a company called Aloha Financial Investment. Public records show it’s been registered to the same house and office suite as VAS, and has shared two of the same leaders.

When LAist previously asked VAS’ attorney about some of these transactions, he said the answers would come in the audit. That audit has since been canceled by VAS.

The attorney, Winchell, also represented Aloha Financial Investment last year, according to court records. He was Do’s appointee to the county ethics commission from 2018 to 2023.

County officials in the letters also reported discrepancies in records VAS provided about how many meals were being served.

“The credibility of the reports submitted are questionable,” the county wrote.

VAS originally reported serving 20,000 meals per month, but “later revised” it to 10,000 per month — without changing the number of people it claimed to be serving each week, according to the county letters.

The group also did not document when people stopped or started receiving meals, the letters state.

Additionally, the county says it found “inconsistencies” in VAS’ list of meal recipients, including people listed more than once.

And when the county reviewed hundreds of records of people VAS said had received meals, only 16% of people marked on applications for meals could be verified as being on the group’s list of who received meals.

Catch up on the investigation

In November 2023, LAist began investigating how millions in public taxpayer dollars were spent. In total, LAist has uncovered over $13 million in public money that went to a little-known nonprofit that records state was led on and off by Rhiannon Do, the now 22-year-old daughter of O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do. Most of that money was directed to the group by Supervisor Do outside of the public’s view and never appeared on public meeting agendas. He did not publicly disclose his family ties.

Much of the known funding came from federal coronavirus relief money.

• Read the story that launched the investigation here.
• Since we started reporting, we’ve also uncovered the group was two years overdue in completing a required audit into whether the meal funds were spent appropriately.
• And we found the amount of taxpayer money directed to the nonprofit was much larger than initially known. It totals at least $13.5 million in county funding — tallied from government records obtained and published by LAist. 
• After our reporting, O.C. officials wrote demand letters to the nonprofit saying millions in funding were unaccounted for. They warned it could be forced to repay the funds.
• And, we found the nonprofit missed a deadline set by county officials to provide proof about how funding for meals were spent.

How to watchdog local government

One of the best things you can do to hold officials accountable is pay attention.

Your city council, board of supervisors, school board and more all hold public meetings that anybody can attend. These are times you can talk to your elected officials directly and hear about the policies they’re voting on that affect your community.

• Read tips on how to get involved.
• The next scheduled board meeting is Tuesday, Aug. 13. You can check out the O.C. Board of Supervisors full calendar here.
• Learn how to submit a public comment to the O.C. Board of Supervisors.

A pair of Los Angeles County engineers knocked on my door a couple of weeks ago and handed me a booklet about how to prepare for flooding and mudflows. They also told me they offer free, specific engineering advice for individual properties.

I was definitely interested in this — I live in a neighborhood affected by the Eaton Fire, and the house I rent is tucked right against a steep hillside with vegetation that burned.

A few days later, two engineers, as well as the county’s public information officer, showed up at my door.

Eden Ly, a civil engineer with the county, looked up at the mountainside looming above my house.

“This mountainside is very steep, and that's the scary part,” Ly said.

The more recent the burn scar, the steeper the hillside and the closer your house is to it, the bigger the danger. The good thing, Ly said, is that much of the vegetation looked pretty recovered from the fire, so the roots should hold onto the dirt. And the property has a retaining wall that Ly said looks solid.

L.A. County civil engineer Eden Ly, right, assesses a retaining wall behind the house of reporter Erin Stone in a neighborhood affected by a recent wildfire.

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Kerjon Lee

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L.A. County Department of Public Works

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Before coming to do a scheduled assessment of a resident’s property, Ly said he and his team analyze all kinds of data to understand how water — and thus mud and debris — may flow there.

“This will include a lot of geospatial information, a lot of mapping, such as topography,” Ly said. It also includes, Ly said, historical rain gauge data to understand how intense rain tends to be in different areas, soil types and more.

So far this season, Ly and his team have knocked on the doors of over 700 homes — 233 homeowners have received walk-through assessments of their properties, said Kerjon Lee, a spokesperson for the county’s Public Works Department.

“A lot of this data isn't public,” Ly said. "And even if it was public, how is the average Joe going to be able to understand what's going on? So our job is to try to bridge that gap.”

By Ly’s analysis, the terrain above my place is gravelly and muddy, not big boulders that can tear through a house. So if the hill does slide, we should be spared something like the deadly mudslides Montecito experienced in 2018, after the Thomas Fire.

“It's more of that kind of mud flow, that mud river that is more the concern in this case,” Ly said.

He suggests various areas to strategically place plywood planks and sandbags. I’m a renter, so there’s not much else I can do.

What if I have to leave?

Then Ly pointed to a weak spot that could lead to mud flowing where we park our cars.

“Heavy storm; we will probably recommend you try not to be there,” he said.

In a strong storm like that, I expect my neighborhood will get evacuation warnings — at least.

This winter, warnings or even orders to leave could become common.

Half an inch of rainfall in less than an hour — or more than 3 to 4 inches in a day — can trigger debris flows after a recent wildfire.

But that’s just a rule of thumb. As bare dirt becomes more saturated with back-to-back storms, less intense rainfall can be a trigger. So in addition to the engineering assessment and prep work, paying attention to forecasts and knowing how water flows where you live is key.

“Our best advice is that you try to deflect and guide everything,” Ly said. But “it's Mother Nature; you can't stop it.”

Talk to neighbors

Overall, Ly tells me the swales my landlord built behind the house, and those my neighbors built, look like they’ll direct water and mud to the street, which is generally the goal.

And that’s another piece of advice he gives — talk to my longtime neighbors, who have been through a storm or a few.

Ly tells me his team will email a more detailed report once they dig into a little more data. That’s part of the free service for higher-risk homes.

In addition to the plans I’ve got for our pets, important medications, possessions and other things I'll need if we have to evacuate, the county's assessment left me with valuable advice — and a little less anxiety too.

Genny Richard constantly thinks about her family’s finances.

“The stress level has been immense,” she said. “Because childcare is our largest expense, that's been a big part of the reason.”

Her 5-year-old son is in his third year at a full-time Montessori school in Irvine. It costs her family $2,020 a month — more than their rent. They don’t have family nearby to help with childcare.

“We definitely had to start severely restricting our budget because of that cost,” Richard said. “We hardly eat out … we are part of a community garden, so we grow whatever vegetables we can on our own. … We only have one car.”

They’re also staying put in their two-bedroom apartment, which is offered through UC Irvine, as they expand their family; Richard is due next month. “We’re probably in a smaller apartment than we actually need, especially with a baby on the way,” Richard said.

Still, the bills began to pile up. Expenses like an unexpected trip to urgent care for an ear infection and Richard’s bout of pneumonia forced them to start putting costs onto their credit cards.

“It'd be like, ‘Oh, this thing came up. This medical bill came up. We can't pay that because we have to pay childcare,'” Richard said. “The credit card debt just sort of happened over time.” And they had to deal with high interest rates.

Genny Richard and her husband Fabricio have used credit cards to help pay for expenses because of the cost of their childcare.

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Courtesy Genny Richard

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Richard, who works at a nonprofit, and her husband, a postdoctoral fellow, have accrued tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt over the last several years. They had to pay for their son’s childcare directly from their bank accounts — so they shifted other costs to cards when they could.

Their family is not alone — LAist heard from dozens of Southern California families who have had to go into debt to finance their childcare, or spend down their savings. Childcare can often be one of the largest costs in their monthly budgets, a problem reflected in state and national data:

• In L.A. County, childcare eats up nearly 20% of a median household income, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.
• In a 2026 survey by Rocket Mortgage, nearly 60% of respondents said they’ve gone into credit card debt or taken on loans due to child-related expenses. 
• A voter poll conducted this past summer found that 3 in 4 respondents saw the cost of childcare for families with young children as a “crisis” or “major problem.” 

And according to an LAist review of data from the Federal Reserve, the median cost for parents who paid for 20 or more hours of childcare a week went up from $1,100 in 2023 to $1,517 in 2025 — a 38% increase.

How big a problem is childcare debt?

But unlike student loans and other forms of debt, good data on how much consumer debt families have because of childcare isn't available, said Chloe Gibbs, a policy fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research who studies the childcare market.

She explained that while student loans are specifically financed, families are “shifting” spending and financing other household costs to pay for childcare and housing.

“We can't really observe that in data because we just see the consumer debt, and we don't know the reason, the impetus behind families perhaps shifting to using credit cards to pay for expenses, so it's an area where we don’t know much,” she said. That affects the ability of researchers and policymakers to know how childcare challenges affect a family’s financial circumstances in both the short and long term, she said, and how they contribute to broader concerns about affordability.

“I think it really is just reflective of the very fragmented landscape around early childhood care and that we just haven't made a concerted public effort in this space at all. So we've kind of left families to navigate and figure out these challenges on their own,” she said. “In the same way, we have just kind of let the data float around in no way that we actually sort of systemically measure and collect.”

What is clear, Gibbs said, is that childcare costs have been rising higher than the rate of inflation, and it’s not surprising families are using credit cards to help with other living expenses. Childcare costs are up 6.6% since January 2025 — and up 31.3% since December 2019, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data compiled by the Economic Security Project.

Why are costs rising?

At the same time, childcare providers have been struggling. Childcare providers are among the lowest-paid professionals nationwide. The workforce has also been shrinking, limiting the availability of care, which economists say drives up prices.

A national survey found that early educators are also grappling with the increasing cost of food, insurance and facilities costs in an industry that has already operated on thin margins. As a result, the majority of providers have had to pass along some costs to families by raising tuition, the survey found.

“There's just a fundamental mismatch in this market,” Gibbs said. State and federal childcare subsidies are usually tied to income, Gibbs noted, so families who earn too much to qualify get little help.

“It's insufficient in the current policy landscape because we still see lots of families, well up the income distribution, who face difficulties affording care,” Gibbs said.

What it means to rely on a credit card

Unable to qualify for subsidies, Pamela Arciaga, a mother of a 4-year-old in Glendale, accrued about $20,000 in credit card debt because of her son’s preschool costs. As the sole earner for her household, she couldn’t afford a full-time preschool program, so her son attended three days a week at $1,000 a month. Her parents would help her watch her son on the days he wasn’t in school, driving all the way from Riverside and back.

“What I relied on essentially was just my credit cards to pay for household groceries, sometimes to pay the water bill and power bill, because the preschool that he goes to, it's not as if I could have been on a payment plan, right? It was a monthly invoice that I had to pay so that he can stay in the program,” she said.

Pamela Arciaga and her son Finn. Arciaga has acquired about $20,000 in credit card debt because of childcare costs.

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Courtesy A Golden State for Kids

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Daniel Contreras and his wife were spending about $3,000 a month a young when their children were both in childcare. They didn't use credit cards, but had to forgo savings.

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Courtesy Daniel Contreras

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Arciaga works in early childhood advocacy, and said she also knew the value of preschool education for kindergarten readiness. She saw it as a short-term sacrifice. “It was an investment for me to actually enroll him in preschool,” she said. But the cost is that she’s blown through her emergency savings and is working to pay her debt off now that her son started transitional kindergarten. She pays about $300 a month for after-school care now.

“For emergencies, or anything like that, I still have to rely on the only credit card that I still have [with] a lot of credit on at this point or don't have a balance on,” she said.

She said she wishes that elected officials paid more attention to the issue of childcare costs.

“We have to work to keep the economy going,” Arciaga said. “However, we don't have any support, so it feels like we're paying double on, on top of taxes for not getting a lot of benefits.”

How childcare costs affect families’ futures

For Daniel Contreras and his wife, the cost of childcare has made them reimagine having a large family.

 “The reality sinks in pretty quickly when, you know, child number one comes in, and you're seeing your savings dissipate,” he said.

When Contreras’ children, who are now 7 and 10, were in childcare full-time in Whittier, the family was paying about $3,000 a month. “It was a fourth of our checks, and we had a mortgage still to pay. We had other items, just to keep the lights on.”

They couldn’t afford to save, and scaled back on buying new clothes for their kids. He said they avoided using credit cards to avoid falling into debt. His children are now older and in public school, but he said childcare still eats a large part of their monthly budget. After-school care costs $1,000 a month.

 “So we're still paycheck to paycheck,” Contreras said. “It's like a heavy weight that's being pushed down at this moment.” At times, he’d had to negotiate with his rental's management to avoid a late fee when behind on rent.

He said he recently watched the gubernatorial debate and was disappointed not to hear very much about childcare.

“I don't see anybody really pushing the envelope and supporting the workforce,” he said. “Because the workforce needs help.”

Share your story

The Los Angeles Police Department has become a major issue in the race for L.A. mayor, with the fate of Chief Jim McDonnell at the center of the debate between the candidates.

Councilmember Nithya Raman, who is challenging incumbent Mayor Karen Bass, has called for the chief’s removal, saying his department was too cooperative with federal immigration agents during last year’s protests over raids.

“I believe he’s lost the trust of Angelenos, especially in light of the ICE raids,” Raman said at a debate earlier this month.

Bass has backed McDonnell, whom she appointed in 2024, saying removing a chief so close to the 2028 Olympics would send the department into "disarray." She also points out crime is down across the city, mirroring crime trends nationwide.

"I don’t think you have any idea what it takes to remove a police chief," Bass said to Raman during the debate.

So what does it take to remove a police chief?

Here’s a closer look at L.A.’s famously contentious history with police leadership in the past and how that has resurfaced in the lead up to the current election.

Mayoral power to remove a chief

The police chief is among the most visible and powerful figures in city government, overseeing 8,500 officers and a budget of more than $3.5 billion dollars — a figure that amounts to more than half the city’s general fund.

Technically, a mayor can’t unilaterally oust a police chief. Only the Police Commission can do that. But the mayor appoints the five-member panel and therefore has a great deal of influence on that decision.

Mayors can always appoint commissioners who bend to their will.

An ousted chief may appeal to the City Council, but would need the support of two-thirds of its members to be reinstated.

Raphe Sonenshein, executive director of the Haynes Foundation, a group dedicated to effective governance in L.A., said it used to be nearly impossible to remove a police chief in the city of Los Angeles.

L.A.’s police chief once enjoyed civil service protection, a strong shield against termination, and was practically the most powerful political figure in the city, Sonenshein said. Removal “was almost a forbidden topic.”

“The police chief stayed as long as the police chief wanted to stay,” Sonenshein said.

Several major events in the 1990s changed that, including the 1991 beating of Rodney King, which followed years of complaints by Black and Latino residents of police abuse.

After the King beating, then-Mayor Tom Bradley called for then-Police Chief Daryl Gates to step down, but Gates refused to do so. Four police officers seen in video of the King beating were charged with felony assault and other charges, but were later acquitted on nearly all counts.

In the wake of the verdict and the riots that followed, voters approved Proposition F, stripping police chiefs of civil service protection and creating a five-year term limit, subject to one five-year extension.

The 1992 riots prompted liberal L.A. to elect a Richard Riordan, a conservative millionaire businessman, as mayor the following year.

Daryl Gates controversy

Earlier this month, Raman praised Gates for his policy of prohibiting officers from asking people about their immigration status. She called it the “gold standard” on police not cooperating with federal immigration agents

Bass said the comment showed Raman was out of touch with the history of L.A. and the role of Gates, a polarizing figure whose department often brutalized Black and brown communities.

Raman has since apologized. “I apologize for talking about an issue that I know causes real pain to Angelenos,” said Raman on the Yesi Ortiz podcast. She also apologized on CNN.

McDonnell has defended his officers’ response to ICE protests, saying demonstrators threw rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails at them, necessitating the use of tear gas. He has called his officers’ actions “heroic.”

Robb Korinke, who runs the political consultancy group GrassrootsLab, said opposing McDonnell fits in with an "anti-establishment"-bent in this election.

“I don't think anyone is safe, whether you're an incumbent, elected or figurehead of a major city department,” he said.

On Monday, as the mayoral debate heated up, billionaire developer Rick Caruso said that he’s voting for Bass for mayor. Caruso, who lost to Bass four years ago by 10 percentage points, said he believed Bass had learned from her mistakes and that she had grown into the job.

Caruso also said he had "serious concerns" about Raman, particularly her desire to remove McDonnell. 

Caruso said this is no time to turn the LAPD "into a laboratory for risking experimentation" by the Democratic Socialists of America, which has endorsed Raman.

Politics of policing have changed

Proposition F changed police politics in Los Angeles. But there were other factors as well, including a change in the election schedule.

L.A.’s switch from holding elections during off-years to during presidential and midterm years dramatically increased the number of voters who participated in city elections.

The electorate is much bigger, younger and more liberal, Korinke said.

“Until a few years ago, the city of Los Angeles held elections in odd years, meaning there was extremely low voter turnout, sometimes as low as in the high teens,” he said, adding that races were decided by more suburban parts of the city with mostly white voters.

“The politics of policing specifically have changed a lot from an environment that was very favorable to policing historically,” Korinke said.

He also explained that progressive voters have taken a greater interest in local issues in recent years, and police reform has become a big focus.

"The voting populace is just a little bit more skeptical of the expense that goes along with policing,” he said.

It's one reason police union spending on political races has become less potent in recent years.

Together with the firefighters union, the police union spent more than $1 million in an effort to defeat Raman’s reelection bid to the City Council two years ago. Raman narrowly won the race.

This year, the union is spending nearly $2.8 million to defeat Raman and elect Bass as mayor.

Bass approved big pay raises for officers in 2023. Raman voted against them, saying the money should be spent in other areas like parks and streetlight repair.

Follow the money

Braddock Sandoval perused tables with wigs, a Darth Vader mask, a black tutu and other items and garments on an unusually sizzling day in Los Angeles. He found a Hawaiian flower necklace and a shark costume and tried them on.

The chemistry professor at Occidental College heard about a campus swap where he could pick out a free Halloween costume with the goal of keeping it from being thrown away. Curious and in need of one, he swung by to see what he could find.

“I think there’s too much cheap plastic waste in this world. So the idea that people are recycling costumes is fantastic, both for budgets, like me, but also just for the planet,” Sandoval said with a laugh. He planned to attend a Halloween dance party dressed as a great white shark eating a tourist — a costume inspired by the freebies he found at the swap.

Every Halloween, costumes get their big moment. But every year, millions end up in a landfill after a single use, and many are made from synthetic plastics that don’t easily break down, contributing to environmental pollution. In Southern California and across the country, Halloween costume swaps and thrift stores are keeping costumes from going to waste. People can donate clean costumes and pick a new one, reducing waste and the resources and emissions required to make new ones.

This year, the National Retail Federation estimates Americans will spend some $4.4 billion on Halloween costumes. In 2018 alone, they discarded about 11.3 million tons (10.25 million metric tons) of textiles, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. When shopping sustainably, experts say, keep three principles in mind: Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Shelie Miller, a University of Michigan professor who studies the environmental impacts of products, said Halloween costumes, like fast fashion, are often made cheaply from plastic materials. They tend to fall apart, she said, and are “not really intended to stick around for a very long time.”

And there are other environmental impacts.

Clothing accounts for 4% to 10% of global carbon emissions, she said, while textile dyeing contributes about 20% of wastewater emissions from industrial sources worldwide.

Synthetic fibers used in clothing, including many costumes, can shed microplastics during washing and end up in water sources, she said. Microplastics have been found in the ocean, air, food and water, as well as a range of human tissues. Growing evidence suggests they can pose risks to human health. Many of these materials are made from oil, which emits pollutants when burned, driving climate change and fueling extreme weather.

“The process of making these, the Halloween costumes, it’s incredible,” said Zack Bowersox, a senior lecturer in political science at Washington University in St. Louis who teaches a class on fast fashion and the environment.

Rather than being stitched together, costumes are often heat bonded, with the plastic melted at the edges to join pieces. “After the season, they’re not meant to even be thrifted or returned, they’re just meant to be thrown away. And that’s where most of them end up, it’s in the landfill. Something like 80% of those suits end up in the landfill,” Bowersox said.

Miller said there are many ways to enjoy Halloween without buying a one-off costume.

“Whenever we buy anything, we’re not just buying the one thing, we’re buying all of the environmental impacts of everything that went into making that product,” Miller said. “So whenever we’re using any sort of single-use product, whether we’re talking about single-use plastic or single-use costumes, we really have to be thinking about is this really how we want to spend our time, money, resources, and is there a better way?”

Braddock Sandoval, a chemistry professor at Occidental College, poses for photos with a costume he picked out during a Halloween costume swap on the campus in Los Angeles, Friday, Oct. 16, 2026

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Jae C. Hong

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Associated Press

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How one fashion lover launched a Halloween costume swap

Sustainable fashion advocate Lexy Silverstein founded the Ultimate Halloween Swap last year after realizing how much money and material went into a costume that might be worn only a few hours before being dumped.

As an avid Halloween fan who loves donning costumes, she was forced to reflect on her own consumption and waste.

“That’s a lot of costumes that I’m buying and wearing once and getting rid of,” she told herself. And she began thinking of other seasons that encourage people to buy new things, like back-to-school time.

Last year, the swap collected hundreds of costume donations, including 10 boxes from the LA Clippers basketball team. It was such a success that she decided to do it again and has since expanded across Southern California, including at Occidental College where Sandoval found his shark suit.

Now, Silverstein is hoping to organize swaps for back-to-school, prom season, winter coats and other high-consumption, single-use times of year.

Washington University in St. Louis has its own version going. Its thrift store is stocked with clothes and items collected during student move-outs when many items get left behind, including Halloween costumes and accessories. For the second year, it organized an on-campus pop-up where the campus community could buy used Halloween costumes for a low price.

Cassie Hage, the university’s assistant director at the Office of Sustainability, said this year’s selections included Austin Powers and kiwi outfits, a demon from the hit TV show “Stranger Things” and matching platypus onesies that delighted a group of friends who stumbled upon them.

“They were kind of dancing around” in them, she said. “That was just a really fun moment to watch.”

How to reduce, reuse, recycle

Thrifting, attending clothing swaps and raiding friends’ and family members’ closets are all ways to avoid buying new costumes. You can assemble a Halloween costume from clothes and accessories you or a friend already own, or modify existing pieces to create a new look.

Silverstein also suggests renting costumes by looking through websites like Facebook Marketplace, Depop and Poshmark.

If you have to buy something, Bowersox suggests buying costumes or accessories made of plant-based materials such as cotton or linen. Licensed products can cost more, he said, but can offer greater transparency over how and where they’re made.

Alison Linder, assistant sustainability coordinator at Occidental College, which has a thrift store of its own with Halloween costumes in stock, encouraged people to organize their own swaps with neighbors, friends or school classmates.

“It’s just as easy as asking your friends for a loan and offering to share what you have,” she said. “And just by doing that simple thing, you save money and you’re helping the environment.”

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