Of those, 95% are used at Halloween and then thrown away – creating 18,000 tonnes of food waste. It’s a similar story in the United States, where most of the 900,000 tonnes of pumpkin produced annually will be trashed, rather than used as food or composted.
How much pumpkin is wasted for Halloween?
Every year, more than 1 billion pounds of pumpkin get tossed out and left to rot in America’s landfills.
What percentage of pumpkins are decorations?
98%
Each year over $150 million worth of pumpkins are grown and 98% of those pumpkins are used for decoration and jack-o-lanterns. The rest of the pumpkins are processed and canned as food.
What percentage of people carve pumpkins on Halloween?
This is an increase of about $95 million (13%) from the $709 million just a year ago.
How much Americans will spend on jack-o-lantern in 2022.
| Data | |
|---|---|
| Percentage of Americans planning to carve pumpkins | 44% |
How much pumpkin is wasted?
Over 18,000 tonnes of edible pumpkin end up in landfill sites every year – the equivalent of 1500 double decker buses, or 360 million portions of pumpkin pie. Even worse than the needless waste of money is the waste of nutritious food.
What happens to unsold Halloween pumpkins?
It Starts In the Patches
In those cases, the excess pumpkins are typically donated to local zoos, given to a farm’s animals such as hungry pigs and eager cattle, or “disced” by farmers and used as natural fertilizer for the land.
Is carving pumpkins wasteful?
Of those, 95% are used at Halloween and then thrown away – creating 18,000 tonnes of food waste. It’s a similar story in the United States, where most of the 900,000 tonnes of pumpkin produced annually will be trashed, rather than used as food or composted.
How are most pumpkins used?
Pumpkins in the 10- to 25-pound range are primarily used for fall decorations, carved into jack-o-lanterns, but can also be used for processing.
How long does it take for a pumpkin to decompose in a landfill?
Over 1.3 billion pounds of pumpkins are thrown away every year, and just one pumpkin can take over 20 years to decompose in a landfill environment. As food waste like pumpkins rot away, it also releases methane gas, a climate change driver 30x more potent than CO2.
How much does the average pumpkin cost?
around 4.83 U.S. dollars
This statistic shows the average price of pumpkins during the Halloween season in the United States from 2017 to 2021. In 2021, the average price per pumpkin in the U.S. amounted to around 4.83 U.S. dollars during the Halloween season.
| Characteristic | Price per pumpkin in U.S. dollars |
|---|---|
| 2019 | 4.04 |
| 2018 | 3.89 |
| 2017 | 4.12 |
Why is the pumpkin a symbol of Halloween?
In the 19th century, when a lot of Irish immigrated to the United States, they brought the Halloween tradition of using vegetables to scare the spirits away. In America, the Irish discovered a new vegetable, the pumpkin, which is harvested in the fall, and began using it to scare the evil spirits.
What is the importance of pumpkin on Halloween?
In Ireland, people started to carve demonic faces out of turnips to frighten away Jack’s wandering soul. When Irish immigrants moved to the U.S., they began carving jack-o’-lanterns from pumpkins, as these were native to the region.
Why do we keep pumpkins on Halloween?
In the 1800s, a lot of people left England and Ireland to go and live in America. They took their Halloween traditions with them, but instead of carving turnips, they made their Halloween lanterns out of pumpkins. There are a lot of pumpkins in America in the autumn.
How much waste does Halloween produce?
To put that into context, that’s around 2000 tonnes of plastic waste or a horrifying 83 million plastic bottles caused by the Halloween festivities. Even more disturbing is the fact that the plastic polymer used in over 63% of these costumes, polyester, can take anywhere between 20-200 years to decompose.
How many pumpkins go to landfill?
1.3 billion pounds
But after Halloween comes the sometimes unpleasant task of disposing of old pumpkins. According to the US Department of Energy, most of the 1.3 billion pounds of pumpkins produced in the U.S. end up in a landfill.
Are Jack O’Lanterns wasteful?
Part of the reason all of this pumpkin ends up in the trash is because Jack-O’-Lanterns are not safe to repurpose for a meal after they’ve been sitting on the stoop. Nevertheless, a little thought and creativity makes reducing Jack-O-Lantern waste easy. The steps below will help you carve sustainably this Halloween!
Can I throw pumpkins in the woods?
Tossing your pumpkins into a forest preserve after Halloween is not only a bad idea, in terms of how it affects wildlife, it’s also illegal and you could be ticketed. The best alternative is to compost your pumpkins, which also keeps them out of the landfills.
What do you do with jack o lanterns after Halloween?
What to Do With Your Leftover Jack-O-Lanterns
- Compost it: If you compost, toss it in your compost bin.
- Bury it: If you don’t compost, consider burying the pumpkin in your garden.
- Feed the birds: Break up the pumpkin and toss it in the woods or bushes where birds can easily get to it.
Will mice eat pumpkins?
(WTHI) — Squirrels, mice, and even deer are just a few wild animals that love to eat pumpkins. Whether it’s on the vine or on your porch, no pumpkin is off-limits.
Can I eat my Halloween pumpkin?
Sure — as long as it is in good condition and hasn’t’ yet been carved. Pumpkins typically used for jack-o’-lanterns usually are larger, with stringier pulp and more watery flesh. However, you can still eat the jack-o-lantern variety with fairly good results.
Are Halloween pumpkins bad for the environment?
Decomposing pumpkins emit greenhouse gas with 20x the warming effect of carbon dioxide. The trouble with throwing away pumpkins is that as they decompose, they emit methane. This greenhouse gas is stronger than carbon dioxide, and has a far more significant impact on global warming.