CLEVELAND — Now that Halloween is over, what should you do with your pumpkins?

Natalie Senturk, the drop off coordinator for Rust Belt Riders, a food waste recycling service in Northeast Ohio, said each year one billion pounds of pumpkins go straight to the garbage.

What You Need To Know

  • Instead of tossing your pumpkins in the trash, try recycling them this year

  • Rust Belt Riders and the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste Management District both have ways to drop off your pumpkins to use for compost 

  • The pumpkins that end up in landfills can contribute to climate change

Senturk explained the damage that throwing your pumpkins in the trash can do to the planet.

“When food scraps or pumpkins go into a landfill they rot and that just rotting, putrefying, they’re mixed with plastic, they’re in an anaerobic environment and they release methane, which is an extremely potent greenhouse gas,” Senturk said. 

Senturk said it contributes to climate change. It’s why organizations like Rust Belt Riders and the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste Management District are giving people other options. Matt Walters with the Cuyahoga County Solid Waste Management District explained the options they have for people wanting to recycle pumpkins.

“We have 10 locations throughout the county that have large bins set up where residents can come and bring their pumpkins and gourds, undecorated for compositing,” Walters said.

Walters said last year they only had two locations and collected around eight tons of pumpkins and they are hoping for even more this year.

“It keeps volume out of the landfills, as landfills are starting to fill up, the less we can put in them, the better,” Walters said.

Rust Belt Riders are hosting their 10th annual pumpkin collection on Nov. 8 with the goal of keeping pumpkins out of the trash and using them for something good.

“We collect hundreds of pumpkins every fall this way and we take them out to Kelly’s Working Well Farm. Kelly’s Working Well Farm is a permaculture site, they do education around regenerative agriculture practices and they take our pumpkins and feed them to the sheep and the goats,” Senturk said.