Last year it was scarily predicted that the UK will bin 8 million pumpkins after Halloween, the equivalent of enough pumpkin pie to feed the entire nation! Almost 58% of consumers buy pumpkins to hollow out and carve, only a third of whom bother to cook the leftover but edible innards, according to the annual #PumpkinRescue campaign. So with more than half of buyers binning the flesh, adding to the UK’s food waste mountain, we all need to be looking at ways to cook or compost it.
Last year we decorated our home with some instagrammable small pumpkins and squashes and they stored fine enough in our home to then be used for food recipes, as did some of the larger carving pumpkins too. Obviously if the flesh is starting to turn then I wouldn’t recommend cooking it up and instead I have ideas further into this post for what you can do with the leftovers. So here are some ideas for inspiration on how to reduce or become zero waste with your pumpkin purchases this October.
We invested in a compost bin to help reduce our food waste in landfill as our local recycling doesn’t accept food waste. I added the remainder of my waste to my composter and will do the same with any leftover pumpkins not fit for eating. If you haven’t got the space for a compost bin some areas now have local community composting schemes, so there may well be somewhere local to you.
If reducing waste is of interest then here is my top tips for reducing household Halloween waste
Great ideas, thanks for sharing! Happy Halloween 🎃
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