Keeping Halloween Green

Warwickshire Recycles have produced a list of the top ways to ensure your Halloween is glowing green this year:

Don't carve a pumpkin at all, if you aren't planning to eat it. It's the top answer for being environmentally friendly but won't be the most popular as carving a pumpkin is now firmly part of the Halloween culture in the UK.

Buy a vegetable you are more likely to eat. Turnips are the traditional vegetable for carving at Halloween in the UK, but are quite difficult to carve. Why not try a butternut squash which is just as nutritious, doesn't require as much water as a pumpkin when grown and is cheaper to buy?

If you buy a pumpkin, eat the flesh. Hollow out the pumpkin as much as possible to create a thin shell - this will help the pumpkin glow more brightly and you will have more flesh to eat. Don't forget to eat the seeds too. The health benefits of eating pumpkins are list below and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for pumpkin recipes.

Use as a food caddy. Once the pumpkin has done its job and scared away any bad spirits, use it as a temporary caddy to collect food scraps ready for composting. You can compost a pumpkin at home with or without a compost bin - see 'Compost Your Pumpkin' below for more details.

Use the food waste collection. Simply place it in the green wheeled bin ready to be composted at an Invessel Composter (IVC) in Warwickshire. Click here for a video of how the IVC works.

Please don't buy a plastic pumpkin. Plastic pumpkins don't biodegrade or compost down and are a waste of precious resources. Watch this video by Half Asleep Chris to find out why single-use plastics are such a waste of resources.

Warwickshire Recycles - email waste@warwickshire.gov.uk or telephone 01926 412593