The Pumpkin Problem

Halloween creates the biggest food dump of the year next to Christmas

Squashed - a pencil drawing by Debbie Ross

I saw huge pumpkins for sale in the supermarket at the weekend for £1.90. The smaller ones were 90p.  I wondered how much the farmer who grew them would get from this crop. Not a great deal, I suspect, for using a large field, and tending it for 8 or 9 months and then harvesting it. They’re selling these as ‘Halloween’ pumpkins of course, but actually, they could be food.  Pumpkins (a generic term for the large orange winter squashes we associate with Halloween) have grown in popularity in the last decade or so, but this huge marketing machine means they are used and abused for a few short days and then ditched, creating mountains of waste that could have been food.  The pumpkins produced for Halloween aren’t especially tasty varieties ( think smaller is better here, not larger). They’re raised for size not flavour, but it’s still a travesty, in my view, that they’re dumped.  One commentator suggests that in the US over a billion dollars worth of pumpkins end up in landfill, in the UK it’s over £30 million pounds worth.  This is a big issue for the planet, contributing to methane emissions (a deadlier gas than carbon dioxide for the climate at 20 times more potent)  ‘Pumpkin pollution’ is a real problem.  It’s a crime that so much food is going to waste, when families are struggling to eat.  I find it hard to reconcile these things.

So, apart from not carving pumpkins at all, what is the alternative? Composting them is the obvious solution.  If your local council doesn’t collect food waste and you don’t compost yourself, then seek out local allotments, a neighbouring gardener or community garden, who will be delighted to take your waste. Don’t just dump them as they can be toxic to dogs, cause upsets stomachs for various wildlife and can spread disease.

Ideally, this food glut would be turned into something delicious. Apparently only 60% of people realise pumpkins are edible.  So, I’m here to tell you they definitely are! I’m not a fan of pumpkin pie, or of sweet veg in general, but there are some very respectable ways to use pumpkin in a savoury capacity and roasting them is one such.

The issue is so big that there’s now a pumpkin rescue campaign - an all year resource to advise about pumpkin use, with statistics, community resources and tasty recipes.  Check it out here.

https://www.hubbub.org.uk/eat-your-pumpkin

I’m delivering a food waste workshop next week, so felt duty bound to re-publish this article, especially as I forgot to send it last year! If you have any pumpkin recipe questions, you can ask me in the comments.

Original drawing of winter squash by Debbie Ross copyrighted.