How to Throw Away Your Pumpkins/Free Compost

I host a pumpkin carving event every year, and a friend who works for the City of San Jose said I've been throwing away pumpkins in the wrong place!!

If you live in San Jose, when Halloween is over and your pumpkins have seen better days, don't toss them in your green yard waste cart or pile them up with your leaves and branches in the street. Believe it or not, San Jose actually wants your pumpkins in the GARBAGE! Same for surrounding cities; I found out as well. 

Sounds a little backward, right? Especially since pumpkins are biodegradable. But there's actually a pretty cool reason for it.

San Jose has two different composting systems. Food scraps, including pumpkins, go into your regular garbage, where machines and workers separate out the organic materials. Over about four months, those materials become nutrient-rich compost used in parks and landscaping.

Meanwhile, your green yard waste cart is strictly for things like leaves, branches, and grass clippings. Those materials go through a separate composting process that creates high-quality compost used to grow local food.

So either way, your old jack-o'-lantern gets a second life. Just make sure it goes in the right bin!

And here's a little bonus! San Jose residents can pick up FREE compost on November 7th at Emma Prusch Farm Park for their own gardens. Not a bad deal if you've got some fall gardening planned!

You can find more information at SJEnvironment.org/Compost.

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