Gourds, Greenhouse Gas, and a Honda Accord’s Worth of Scraps

Happy Spooky Season, Decomposers

Welcome back to the bins.

Speaking of bins, from April through September our community has donated 4,229.25 pounds of food scraps to the compost bins (and the worm bin!). That’s more than two tons of peels, stems, coffee grounds, and leftovers turned into living soil instead of landfill waste. For reference, that’s about the size of a Honda Accord. Every banana peel, apple core, avocado pit, and frankly heroic amount of coffee grounds has played a role in building a stronger, greener neighborhood.

Photo by Jess Frost

The bins are alive this time of year, humming with quiet chaos. Inside, an entire ecosystem is hard at work, turning scraps into gold (or a very powerful soil amendment, basically the same thing). Microbes, worms, and fungi are breaking everything down into rich, healthy compost that will feed next season’s plants. It’s a living network of transformation, fueled by oxygen, moisture, and your leftovers. The pile heats up, breathes, and cools down again, mimicking the rhythms of nature itself. It’s the full circle of what we eat, how we live, and what we return to the earth.

Photo by Jess Frost

And since we’re talking about that cycle, here’s your gentle reminder to eat and compost your pumpkins.

As your Halloween décor starts to slump and decay, think twice before tossing it. There are endless ways to give your pumpkins a second life. Roast the seeds, make pumpkin bread, blend it into soup, or bake some treats for your dog. (The internet is absolutely crawling with recipes.) Once you’ve gotten all you can out of it, bring what’s left to the Maple Street Community Garden on Saturdays between 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. Just remember to remove stickers, candles, and decorations before dropping them off. Every pumpkin that skips the landfill cuts down methane emissions and adds nutrients back into our shared soil.

If you’ve ever wondered why it matters, here’s a fun fact: when organic waste like pumpkins ends up in landfills, it decomposes without oxygen and releases methane, a greenhouse gas more than 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Composting, on the other hand, keeps oxygen flowing through the pile so the microbes can do their work cleanly and efficiently. It’s one of the simplest, most tangible ways to fight climate change from your own kitchen counter.

More than one billion pounds of pumpkins end up in U.S. landfills each year after Halloween, according to the Department of Energy. Let’s make sure ours don’t.

Photo by Justin Moore

As we head into the final stretch of the composting season before the winter solstice, take a moment to think about what 4,229 pounds of scraps really means. It’s not just waste diverted. It’s community effort, environmental impact, and shared care in physical form. It’s proof that small actions build big results.

Thank you for helping us reach this milestone, for keeping the bins alive and thriving, and for showing up week after week with buckets in hand. Thank you for reading this blog, and for believing that change grows from the ground up.

We’ll see you at the bins.

With grit and gratitude,

Jess Frost

MSCG Communication Committee