How to deal with Halloween pumpkins to avoid harming the environment?

Every year, Americans buy tens of millions of decorative pumpkins to carve, paint, and display for Halloween. Throwing them away can have a huge impact on the environment due to the amount of methane gas emitted by the pumpkins. So what should you do?

Carved pumpkins with spooky faces lit with candles inside are a symbol of Halloween.

Every year, on the night of October 31st and the morning of November 1st, Halloween takes place. People believe that the souls of the dead will return to visit their homes and leave messages in their dreams.

Therefore, during this time, many people hang pumpkin lanterns in front of their houses, carving out human faces, in the hope that spirits and demons will have light to find their way and not disturb the homeowner.

Americans buy millions of pumpkins to decorate for Halloween.

How serious are pumpkin emissions to the environment?

According to data from the Department of Agriculture (2022), the United States harvested about 2 billion pounds of pumpkins for sale whole (not processed, canned, or made into pies or breads).

Assuming those pumpkins end up in a landfill, they will emit about 7,500 tons of methane, according to Robert Czubaszek, an environmental scientist at Bialystok University of Technology in Poland. That's the greenhouse gas equivalent of more than 45,000 cars, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

But there are better ways to dispose of jack-o-lanterns this year, including composting them, smashing them, or feeding them to farm animals, as long as you don't douse the pumpkins with bleach or paint like you do every year.

Compost Pumpkin

If you have a yard or garden, you can compost pumpkins and add nutrients to the soil for spring planting because composted pumpkins, broken down by oxygen-loving bacteria, emit very little methane. Emissions are much higher when pumpkins are sealed without oxygen inside a landfill, where a different type of bacteria digests the food and produces methane.

Pumpkins are about 90 percent water, so they decompose quickly, says Beverly Jaszczurowski, executive director of Scarce, an Illinois-based environmental nonprofit. Good compost relies on a mix of wet and dry ingredients, so juicy pumpkins are a good companion to the crisp fall leaves that many people compost this time of year.

To speed up the process you can cut the pumpkin into pieces or smash them with a pestle. Seeds should be removed before composting or if you have a patch of pumpkins growing in your garden, remove decorations such as googly eyes or any wax bits from melted candles as they will not decompose.

After Halloween, pumpkins can be used as animal feed.

Can pumpkin be fed to animals?

Giraffes, pigs. are animals that enjoy pumpkins in farm gardens.

After every Halloween, some zoos collect pumpkins and feed them to animals like giraffes and elephants. Farmers also collect pumpkins to feed their chickens, sheep, goats, cattle, and pigs.

The nonprofit Pumpkins for Pigs connects people with farms and animal sanctuaries in 600 locations across the United States and Canada. Check their website to find the location closest to you, or sign up to receive pumpkin donations, or schedule a pumpkin pickup in your area.

For the health of the animals, the organization requests that pumpkins with acrylic paint, rhinestones, or other inedible decorations not be donated. Water-based paints, glues, and adhesives are acceptable.

'Some people actually use Clorox to preserve carved pumpkins,' says Jennifer Seifert, founder of Pumpkins for Pigs, because doing so is toxic and can be replaced with vinegar instead.