If you’re anything like me it’s now 3 days after Halloween and you’re just coming to grips with the fact that the jack-o-lanterns have got to go. They were festive a few nights ago and are still clinging on to some of their liveliness but have now reached the beginning of a number of stages of decomposition: the first being the sorta-wrinkled-and-withered stage, which comes right before the half-rotten stage followed by the fully-rotten stage which is very quickly followed by the stage where the neighbours ask if you’re doing some sort of science experiment by leaving them out so long.

Something may be going rotten on your doorstep or in your trash next week but not if the City Of Vancouver has anything to say about it: the city’s new Food Scraps program that allows you to put compost in yard trimmings bin for pickup counts jack-o-lanterns as food waste! Or if you live in an apartment without composting facilities the Food Scraps Drop Spot will be open this weekend at both the Winter Farmers Market at Nat Bailey Stadium and the Gordon Neighbourhood House in the West End!

It may look like a garbage can but I swear this is our green-lidded yard waste bin that we put our food scraps in for pickup

Below are the results of how many drops were made and how many pounds of food have been gathered so far at the Food Scraps Drop Spot. Our friends over there let me know that you should look out for a little tombstone as well as a “pumpkin casket” for all those zombie pumpkins you’re going to drop off at the Winter Farmers Market. It would be incredible to see a spike in pounds of food scraps resulting from folks dropping off their pumpkins this weekend.

More details on how/where to compost your pumpkins and keep them out of the landfill:

foodscrapsdropspot.tumblr.com
vancouver.ca/foodwaste
eatlocal.org