Say Boo to Landfills - Compost (or Eat)Your Pumpkin After Halloween!

 

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 by W.E. Littlejohn

A friendly reminder to help our environment and stop food waste.

Around 1.3 billion pounds of pumpkins end up in landfills each year.  Organic waste in landfill cannot break down effectively in landfills.  In a landfill environment our Halloween pumpkins release methane gas, a greenhouse gas more than 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide at trapping heat in the atmosphere.  (Info from elevatepackaging.com https://elevatepackaging.com/blog/compost-your-pumpkin-after-halloween/.)

Eating pumpkins is best.  According to the Mayo Clinic, Pumpkin are Loaded with scary-good nutrients like vitamin A.  (https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speaking-of-health/pumpkin-loaded-with-scary-good-nutrients).  Pumpkins seeds add a nice crunch to salads.  Pumpkin seed oil is great for cooking.  

It’s sad to throw away pumpkins or see them rot on door steps or in yards.  

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Each year, 119 billion pounds of food is wasted in the United States.  That equates to 130 billion meals and more than $408 billion in food thrown away each year. Shockingly, nearly 40% of all food in America is wasted, according to Feeding America.com (https://www.feedingamerica.org/our-work/reduce-food-waste .  Also see Greenplanet.com - Millions of Pumpkins are Wasted During Halloween (https://www.onegreenplanet.org/environment/millions-of-pumpkins-are-wasted-during-halloween/).

Again, just a friendly reminder to help our environment and stop food waste.

Thank you.