After Halloween: Don’t Throw Your Pumpkins In The Garbage

The Holidays are a fun time, but some of our actions have unfortunate consequences. During Christmas and Easter, there is a big jump in people buying puppies, kittens, and bunnies as gifts. Unfortunately, many of those animals end up in shelters just a few weeks later. When it comes to Halloween, the situation isn’t as sad, but it is pretty stupid. We’re talking about Pumpkins.

Millions of Americans have bought them in the last few weeks. there’s a good chance that you have carved one into a Jack-o-Lantern yourself and have it sitting it on your front doorstep. But what happens to these pumpkins next week, when they are getting soft and drawing flies? For most people, the answer is that they are heading into the trash. The result in the USA is 1.3 billion pounds of organic waste going straight into landfills.

The problem here is that when food ends up in landfills, it produces the greenhouse gas, methane while it decomposes. If you’ve got a compost bin, throw your pumpkin there instead of the trash. If you don’t have one, it might be worth seeing if any of your neighbors do. We never want to see pumpkin carving go by the wayside, but there’s got to be a better solution to getting rid of them then to dump them in the landfill.

Source: Inhabitat