I just spent my first Halloween in the US. It was super fun and festive, but the curse of consciousness is that you can’t unsee how everything comes down to a few -isms.
Every October, America goes all out with pumpkins. They’re on porches, in lattes, and plastered all over social media. But here’s the not-so-fun part: most of those pumpkins are grown just to sit around for a week or two before ending up in the trash.
Let’s rewind a bit…
The history of pumpkin carving
The whole pumpkin-carving thing started way back with Celtic traditions for Samhain, where people in Ireland and Scotland used to carve turnips and beets to ward off evil spirits. When immigrants came to North America, they found pumpkins (bigger, softer, and way easier to carve) and the jack-o’-lantern was born. (Smithsonian Magazine)
Fast-forward to now, and the tradition’s ballooned into a massive seasonal industry.
About 95% of pumpkins grown in the US and UK never get eaten!!! Like how insane is that? (World Economic Forum) In the U.S., more than 1 billion pounds of pumpkins end up in landfills every Halloween. (AP News)
Why halloween pumpkins suck
- It’s not just the pumpkin that’s wasted. It’s the water, land, labor, and energy that went into growing it. The opportunity cost of these scarce resources is super high!
- Rotting pumpkins = methane. When they decompose in landfills, they release methane, a greenhouse gas way more potent than COâ‚‚
- Meanwhile, people are going hungry. In a world struggling with food insecurity, it’s wild that we’re growing edible crops purely for décor
what can we do instead
- Pick edible pumpkin varieties: carve them, then cook them
- Don’t carve at all: paint or decorate so you can still eat it later. this is what I ended up doing! 🙂
- Compost or drop off leftovers at farms (pigs love pumpkins)
- Skip the pumpkin altogether: there are other ways to get spooky
Halloween doesn’t have to be so hollow (pun intended lol). If we’re going to celebrate, let’s do it in a way that’s a little kinder to the planet
