Got old pumpkins or decorative gourds? Bring them to the Urbana Landscape Recycling Center (LRC) on Saturday, November 7th from 11 am to 3 pm. You can drop off your pumpkins (and even smash them, if you want) for composting at no cost to you. Champaign County Environmental Stewards will be on site to share information on composting and our other local projects, such as the effort to establish a permanent Household Hazardous Waste (HHW) facility in our county.
Please remove all candles or other non-biodegradable decorating materials, such as plastic, metal, stickers, etc. prior to dropping items off at LRC. Thanks for keeping these contaminants out of the composting process!
Composting, rather than landfilling, your rotting pumpkins, is important not only to return water and nutrients to the soil, but also to avoid methane emissions associated with sending food scraps and other organic waste to the landfill. Learn more from this factsheet produced by Go Green Winnetka and the Illinois Food Scrap and Composting Coalition (IFSCC): A Smashed Pumpkin is Better Than a Rotted One.
If you’re a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign student, note that Students for Environmental Concerns (SECs) will also be collecting pumpkins on campus on November 7th from 1-3 pm. The location is still TBD. Follow SECs on Facebook to get the details, when they are finalized.
Can’t make it to one of the local collections? LRC will be accepting pumpkins and gourds for composting, free of charge, throughout November. Thank you LRC for helping keep these natural resources out of landfills and for being a great local source for compost and mulch! And thanks to Champaign County citizens, in advance, for keeping your pumpkins out of the landfill!
This post was written by CCES Board Member Joy Scrogum.