What to Know
- The New York Botanical Garden and the Bronx's Lehman College hosted an event to destroy old pumpkins
- All of the smashed pumpkins are turned into compost on-site to be used on Lehman College's campus
- Each of the five NYC boroughs has at least one pumpkin smash event during the week following Halloween
Halloween may be over but the fun doesn’t have to end – and there is a way to help the planet while you’re at it.
The New York Botanical Garden hosted a pumpkin smashing event at Lehman College in the Bronx on Nov. 2.
Students and members of the community came together to throw their gourds off of a ledge overlooking the campus quad. The event featured a giant pumpkin catapult and students tabling freshly baked pumpkin bread.
"It’s really a celebration of our community and it’s a celebration of how we connect to other parts of the Bronx community," said Lehman College President Fernando Delgado.
Guests were encouraged to bring their leftover Halloween pumpkins. The botanical garden also donated the old pumpkins from their fall display for visitors to smash.
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The smashed pumpkins get composted and then utilized on-site at the Lehman College campus. By composting the popular decorative pieces, the event diverts hundreds of pounds of pumpkins from being put into landfills.
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“All organic material will produce methane as it slowly decomposes in a landfill. When it is in a landfill, it’s not exposed to air. It needs air to properly compost,” said Ilona Linins, Lehman College Director of Environmental Health and Safety and Co-Chair of Campus Sustainability.
She said composting is important to do on a community level because it takes enormous amounts of organic matter, like pumpkins, to make just a small amount of compost.
“It reduces to about 5-10 percent of its original volume when everything is said and done,” said Linins.
All five boroughs host pumpkin smashes, and while the Bronx event may be over, the following smashes will be happening this weekend, according to the New York Department of Sanitation website:
Saturday, November 5
Manhattan:
Roosevelt Island
Manhattan Park, across from Foodtown
11:00 AM - 2:00 PM (rain or shine)
Hosted by iDig2Learn and Big Reuse
Brooklyn:
Saturday, November 5
Bed-Stuy Food Scrap Drop-off (FSDO)
Decatur Street & Lewis Avenue, NW corner
11:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Hosted by Queens Botanical Garden
Queens:
Lou Lodati Park
41-15 Skillman Avenue
10:30 am - 1:00 pm
Hosted by Queens Botanical Garden
Staten Island:
Snug Harbor Cultural Center & Botanical Garden
1000 Richmond Terrace
10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
Sunday, November 6
Manhattan:
La Plaza Cultural Community Garden
E. 9th Street & Avenue C
12:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Hosted by LES Ecology Center
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, 1.5 billion pounds of usable pumpkins were produced in 2020. And only about one fifth of these were used for actual food production.
If you cannot make it to a pumpkin smash event, there are still ways to prevent your rotting pumpkins from harming the environment.
Linens says each of the New York City boroughs have a food scrap drop-off and composting sites where you can not only take your pumpkins but also your household food scraps.
“We’re generating food scraps all year around… you’ve got the material, bring it in and everybody wins,” said Linins.
