With more than 70% of Brits set to celebrate Halloween this year,[1]the holiday is fast becoming a spooky staple for UK households. Companies are only too happy to cater for families who want to decorate their homes, gather at ghoulish events and take to the streets in frightening costumes, with national spending set to exceed upwards of £680m.[2]
But, in the background, the environmental impact of Halloween continues to creep up. In addition to the rising volume of wasted sweets, tantalising treats and holiday-themed party food, insight reveals that almost 40 million pumpkins are bought for carving every year, with more than half (22 million) simply thrown away the morning after.[3]
The reason behind this worrying trend? A widespread lack of culinary knowledge about what to do with your ghoulish gourds, as well as the negative consequences of throwing them away. A survey from Hubbub, for example, recently found that only 42% of ‘trick or treaters’ knew that the fleshy innards of pumpkins are edible, with most respondents (85%) not even considering the squash as food at all.[4]
In result? A surge of waste over the Halloween holiday, with most left to rot in landfill – creating greenhouse gases considered 21 times more damaging to the environment than CO2. So, while the costumes and decorations might look scary on the surface, food waste is the truly frightening part of Halloween.
What to do with your Halloween pumpkin
High in fibre, calcium and magnesium, pumpkins are a true superfood. Their seeds, when toasted, are rich in potassium and protein. Just 80g counts as one of your five-a-day, while high concentrations of vitamins A and C improve your eyesight and protect the skin from sunburn.
While not yet a traditional dinner table staple in the UK, there’s a whole host of free resources available online to help make the most of your pumpkin leftovers. Love Food Hate Waste, for example, has created an extensive collection of recipes, while BBC Good Food has something for all the family to enjoy – from pies and pasties to soups, stews, risottos and cakes.
More than just a temporary candle holder, we should be celebrating the flexibility of our autumnal vegetables, not leaving perfectly good food to rot on our doorsteps. After all, if you turned the UK’s uneaten Halloween pumpkins into soup, you’d have enough for everyone in Britain to have a bowl.[5]
Make a change this Halloween
At ReFood, we’re encouraging people to do something different with their Halloween food waste this year. By all means carve out your pumpkins and show them off on the doorstep, but this year finish your Halloween celebrations by making or baking something special. Fiendish fun with a clear environmental conscience!
We see food waste as the real Halloween horror story. When you consider the sheer number of people suffering from food poverty, as well as the significant environmental consequences caused by improper disposal, it’s clear that something must be done.
Eating what we can and reducing what we waste should be our national priority. For any surplus, we should redistribute it to those in need. For inedible waste or out-of-date produce, we should prioritise anaerobic digestion (AD) to harness the value from such an important resource.
With three state-of-the-art AD facilities across the UK, ReFood turns more than 400,000 tonnes of food waste into renewable energy every year. Our ambition is to see zero food waste to landfill right across the UK, including pumpkins, snacks, treats, sweets and party food at this time of year.
Our message is clear. When you’re carving your pumpkin this Halloween, think twice about unnecessary food waste. Why not try a new recipe? Why not save the seeds? If you’re one of the lucky households that has a food waste caddy, use it! Most importantly, don’t throw your pumpkin into landfill – it’s a terrible waste.
To find out more about ReFood, or its food waste recycling services, visit www.refood.co.uk.
