How to compost your pumpkins: Why Long Island Organics Initiative wants you to donate them

Alexis Flynn hoisted a large pumpkin and tossed it into a dumpster stationed at Michael J. Tully Park in New Hyde Park. She had cut off the top and carved leg holes for her 5-month-old baby to make a perch for a first Halloween photo, but it was looking a little worse for wear.

The pumpkin won’t be sent to a landfill, though. At the end of the week, the spent decorations will be carted off to be converted into rich compost, as part of Long Island Organics Initiative's new Halloween composting project. 

"Every year, I try to think of something to do with it after it’s done," said Flynn, 35, who lives in New Hyde Park. "You can just throw them in the trash but then it ends up in a landfill."

"So I thought this was a nice way to send them off, to turn them into something new," she said.

More than 2 billion pumpkins are grown in the United States each year, most for decorations, and 80% of them are tossed in the trash after Halloween. Organic waste dumped and buried deep in landfills decomposes without oxygen, a process that emits methane, a planet-warming greenhouse gas 28 times more potent than carbon. When composted, methane emissions are dramatically decreased.

There are very few municipal composting programs on Long Island, as Newsday has previously reported. Most composting projects are run by community and environment groups. 

This year, Long Island Organics Initiative, a network of businesses, nonprofits, students and municipalities, decided to divert some of that waste from landfills. Residents can bring their pumpkins to various collection sites across Long Island during the week after Halloween.

The pumpkins will be brought to Long Island Compost’s facility in Yaphank, where they’ll be turned into rich humus, a beneficial amendment to compacted or nutrient-deficient garden soil. Maggio Environmental Services is donating the dumpsters and trucking for the project.

"Hopefully this is the first one of many that we can build on," Marjorie Spitz, a co-founder of  Long Island Organics Initiative, told Newsday.

Spitz hopes the pumpkin composting might inspire some participants to begin composting year-round as well.

"This is a nice doorway to encouraging people to think about what happens to their food scraps," she said.

By composting instead of putting them in the trash, they reduce their contribution to greenhouse gases and create "something valuable for their soil."