By Bridget Shirvell

In the 11th instalment of our series, Advice and ideas on raising kids in the climate crisis, the author of Parenting in a Climate Crisis, Bridget Shirvell, offers advice on how to celebrate Halloween with your kid that minimises waste, environmental and climate impacts.

Why Halloween feels different in 2026

It’s almost 80 degrees and humid. Not exactly what you think of when you think of pumpkin picking in New England, and yet somehow every autumn we manage to go pumpkin picking on a day that feels more like summer than fall.

My daughter carefully selects cheese and sugar pumpkins, picking them up and running her hands over them. We’ll use them to decorate our stone wall. After she’s chosen the right ones, we head out to the field, where we pick one or two field pumpkins to place on the porch, possibly to carve closer to Halloween.

How our pumpkin consumption triggers an environmental crisis

I suspect we’re not the only family that treats the pumpkin as a prop. Somewhere between the carving and the clean-up, most of us stop thinking of the pumpkin as food. It becomes decoration, then a lantern, and by the first week of November, it’s a slumped, mouldering thing we can’t wait to get off the porch.

That habit adds up. In the US, more than 1 billion pounds of pumpkins rot in landfills each year after Halloween, according to the Department of Energy. The UK has its own version of the problem. The environmental charity Hubbub, which organises the Eat Your Pumpkin Campaign, estimated that of the more than 30 million pumpkins expected to be carved in 2023, more than half (15.82 million) won’t be eaten.

In a landfill, food doesn’t break down the way it would in a compost bin, because without sunlight and oxygen, it releases methane rather than carbon dioxide. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. A pumpkin on its own is a small contribution, but for kids it’s one they can easily see and do something about.

As a child, my family always carved pumpkins, and while we’d save the seeds, we’d toss them in olive oil with salt and pepper to roast and eat as a snack.

Don’t send your pumpkin to landfill

I admit we mostly tossed out the rest of the edible bits. There’s so much you can do with pumpkins, though. The flesh you scoop out, the thick part between the skin and the stringy middle, is the raw material for soup, curry, or roasted cubes.

Although it should be noted that if you are carving field pumpkins instead of sugar, cheese, Delicia, or Cinderella, depending on what you’ll make, you’ll need to consider the texture and flavour, as field pumpkins tend to be watery and bland.

Regardless of the variety, the seeds make a nutritious snack when roasted. Or you can always save some seeds to try growing next season. My daughter was delighted to find one random pumpkin growing in the part of our lawn we converted into a wild meadow. We had let some of the previous year’s pumpkins decompose in it.

We don’t really tend to carve our pumpkins anymore. We’ve done it once or twice, but mostly we leave them as decorations. When the pumpkins have finished their night on the porch, whether or not you carved them, though, there are options.

Composting is the easiest way to keep it out of the landfill. Local farms will also often take unpainted, uncarved pumpkins to feed animals. We tend to give many of ours to friends who have chickens. If you have a yard, you can also leave some out to possibly grow new ones the next year, or, at the very least, be food for the birds and other wildlife.

What to try, by age

Little ones (about 3 to 6)

It’s harder to hold little kids attention so make the the scooping the main event. After all it’s messy and sensory, ideal for little ones. Give them a big spoon and a bowl, and let them sort seeds from stringy bits.

Rinse and roast the seeds together with a little oil and salt, and talk about what a seed does: it’s how next year’s pumpkin gets started. After Halloween, put a hollowed-out half in the garden with some seed in it and see who visits.

Elementary age (about 7 to 10

Let your child pick a pumpkin recipe to make, such as an easy soup or pumpkin bread. Keep in mind that if you have a field pumpkin, which tends to be a bit watery and bland, you’ll need to drain the water and may want to add more seasoning.

After Halloween, run a “Who Ate Our Pumpkin?” watch with your jack-o-lantern. Leave the pumpkin in the garden or yard, check it daily, and keep a log of nibbles, tracks, and visitors.

Tweens and up

Hand them the bigger project. They can find out what your local council or town does with food scraps, who takes pumpkins nearby-farms are often a great option, or whether a drop-off exists, and then organise one or a group chat reminder in early November. If there isn’t a programme, that’s a good first small act of community organising.

A discussion between the Founder of A greener life, a greener world, Anders Lorenzen, and Bridget Shirvell.

Bridget Shirvell is a freelance journalist and the author of Parenting in a Climate Crisis. A handbook that explores the challenges and opportunities of raising children in an era of climate change. Her work has been featured in various publications, including The New York Times, Grist, and Fast Company, where she combines personal insights with expert perspectives to inspire and inform readers. Bridget is passionate about raising awareness and sparking meaningful conversations around climate action and the future of the next generation. You can follow her Substack here.