Aaron Roethe hurled moldy jack-o’-lanterns from the top of a two-story parking garage. Don’t worry— it was allowed. Earlier this month, for a few hours, the city of Redlands hosted a pumpkin-smashing event to teach people not to throw their old, rotting gourds into regular refuse bins.
Roethe’s wife sent him there with a bag of past-their-prime pumpkins from Halloween. Each pumpkin sent seeds and pumpkin guts around as they hit the metal dumpster below.
“Very therapeutic,” he said with satisfaction.
But the city didn’t set up a metal dumpster just to let people purge their rage. The city wanted to educate people about where pumpkin trash goes. According to Redlands’ recycling coordinator Mike Haynes, they do not belong in the normal refuse bin.
“Once it goes in the trash bin, unfortunately, it goes to our landfill, and it creates so much methane gas, it's just horrible for our community, horrible for the world,” Haynes said.
Methane, a greenhouse gas, traps heat and contributes to global warming. Haynes said people should instead toss their pumpkins in their green waste bins. The city of Redlands’ waste division processes the contents of green waste bins into compost and mulch.
“[Compost] is very rich in nutrients that go back into our Earth that we can utilize, you know, for gardening and anything of that nature,” he said.
You can also compost at home. Redlands’ sustainability coordinator, Kaitlin Haberlin, stood by Haynes holding a small plastic box filled with worms. The worms were feasting on newspaper, coffee grounds and vegetable scraps. Haberlin said people can compost using homemade worm farms, aka vermicomposting.
“Worm farms are little habitats that we build to keep in our kitchens, our garages or other places in our house where we can put our food waste in, and the worms will eat our food waste,” Haberlin said as she rummaged through the worm habitat, lifting up old asparagus and shreds of newspaper.
Worms don’t have digestive systems like humans, so a lot of the nutrients in the food are left behind in the worm castings (worm poop).
“We collect all the poop, and that's the good stuff. That's what we want, and that's a really highly nutritious plant food,” Haberlin said.
She hoped pumpkin smashing would get people excited about the new climate action plan. The plan outlines ways the city will try to reduce its greenhouse emissions. One way to do that is to divert more food waste from the landfill. And if smashing a few moldy jack-o’-lanterns helps do that, the city is more than happy to let residents blow off steam for the good of the planet.
More information about waste disposal in Redlands can be found on the city’s solid waste and recycling services page.