The cult really just can’t help itself
Don’t trash it, smash it: Give your Halloween pumpkin a second life
Halloween is still days away, but some jack-o’-lanterns are already looking more sad than scary. Raleigh and Wake County waste officials are asking residents to keep those pumpkins out of the trash.
Raleigh’s new free composting drop-off offers an alternative, keeping pumpkins out of a landfill where they can produce heat-trapping methane and take up increasingly scarce space. (snip)
Buried in a landfill with little oxygen, organic material is broken down by microbes that produce methane. Pound for pound, methane has roughly 80 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide over the first 20 years after its release, according to the United Nations Environment Programme.
Managed composting supplies oxygen, moisture and a balance of materials so microbes can turn pumpkins and other organic waste into a soil amendment. The process reduces landfill methane emissions and returns nutrients to the soil, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
Um, wait, they are correct about methane. But, plants have always produced methane from rotting regardless of man’s input. There was no need to write this hysteric article.
For anyone who would rather give a jack-o’-lantern a more dramatic farewell, there are options for that, too.
Botanist & Barrel in Cedar Grove is hosting its Great Pumpkin Smash Party from 4-7 p.m. Nov. 1 at 105 Persimmon Hill Lane. Admission is free. Organizers invite people to bring leftover pumpkins to smash, stomp and turn into compost.
That does sound more fun. Or, I could just chuck mine in the woods behind the house for the animals to eat.
Of course Teach you do remember from high school chemistry that methane slowly oxidizes in the atmosphere into water and carbon dioxide