Recycle your Halloween pumpkins in Kane County
Kane County Recycles will offer a free pumpkin recycling event again this year to help you reduce your waste.
Jack-o'-lanterns, pumpkins and decorative squashes are highly compostable and it is a real shame to just send them to a landfill, when the nutrients they contain could instead be returned to soil that will grow more healthy food.
The recycling event will be held from 9 a.m. to noon Saturday, Nov. 4, at Pushing the Envelope Farm, 1700 Averill Road in Geneva.
Accepted will be pumpkins, squashes, and decorative gourds for composting right on a farm. It is very important to keep it free of nonorganic materials; just like food scrap composting.
This means no candles, yarn hair, stickers, googly eyes, plastic ears or plastic of any kind.
The City of Elgin is also hosting pumpkin recycling Elgin from 9 a.m. to noon in the parking lot on the southwest corner of Grove Avenue and Kimball Street in downtown Elgin.
For other locations, visit www.countyofkane.org/recycling.
For questions, contact Jennifer Jarland, Kane County recycling coordinator, at (630) 208-3841 or recycle@countyofkane.org.
The Pumpkin Smash is an annual effort by communities in Illinois to divert pumpkins from landfills by providing locations for residents to drop-off jack-o'-lanterns to be composted. It is held each year the Saturday after Halloween. "Don't Trash it, Smash it!"
In 2014, Wheaton, Elmhurst and SCARCE hosted the first pumpkin recycling collections. This collection composted 9.31 tons of pumpkins and helped to improve composting laws in Illinois. By 2016, the Pumpkin Smash grew to over 31 sites across the state.
To date, the Pumpkin Smash has diverted over 93 tons of pumpkins from landfills.
Why compost pumpkins?
• They are 90 percent water and are full of nutrients that are good for the soil;
• Support a local farm by providing these nutrients for their gardens;
• Most of the pumpkins processed in the U.S. are grown in Illinois - keep the water and nutrients here!
• Food scraps and organic materials in landfills are the third largest producers of methane, a potent greenhouse gas contributing to climate change