The SCARY Truth About Pumpkin Waste
The SCARY facts about pumpkin waste! In 2020, the USDA stated that about 66,000 acres in the US were used to produce pumpkins (that's 50,000 football fields!). Of the 2 billion pumpkins produced, it is estimated that 1.3 billion ended up in landfill (975 MILLION pounds!) where every 100 pounds will generate about 8.3 pounds of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas.
YOU can help reduce the greenhouse gas emissions this post-Halloween! Here are a few ideas:
COOK IT. If you have a full pumpkin, remove and roast the seeds (look up pepita recipes for delicious and nutritious snacks!), and then cut the pumpkin up into chunks to be roasted. They make a great treat for you and your dogs.
FEED THE ANIMALS. If the pumpkin is not rotten or painted, scrape out any wax that might be in the pumpkin, and consider donating your pumpkin to a chicken raising neighbor or a nearby animal sanctuary or pig farm.
COMPOST IN PLACE. Scrape out any wax or paint on the pumpkin and get out a bat or a mallet or demolition tool of choice. Find a nice spot in your yard that could use some good soil treatment and smash the pumpkin. Cover it with some leaves, and let it decompose right there. Who knows, maybe next year you will have your own little volunteer pumpkin patch! The birds and squirrels might even help you out with this.
COMPOST, COMPOST, COMPOST. Please just don't throw it in your garbage can. The City of Austin has curbside compost pick up (it's the green bin). Please use it!
TAKE THE EXTRA FEW MINUTES TO PROTECT OUR ENVIRONMENT. While painted pumpkins provide some really nice decoration, unless you use food-based dyes for painting them, you cannot compost these or feed them to animals without removing the painted skin of the pumpkin.
