This past Friday, students and staff gathered on the quad to blow off some steam by smashing pumpkins and eating s’mores. With the help of Kalamazoo College’s Office of Student Activities and the Environmental Stewardship Center’s Composting Crew, cartloads of pumpkins were successfully smashed into smithereens!  

Dozens of students, as well as some family of faculty members, came to throw, stomp, chop, and ultimately demolish a batch of pumpkins last week. Students cheered each other on as they chucked pumpkins at the ground, healthily venting the stress from the impended finals season. In between slamming pumpkins with shovels, students shared cozy cups of hot chocolate and gooey s’mores and chatted amidst the fitting tune of alternative rock band, Smashing Pumpkins.  

 The pumpkins were donated by students and community members, most of which were left over from Halloween decorations and fall harvests. Every year, millions of pounds of pumpkins end up in landfills where they contribute to the significant methane emissions of landfills, rather than successfully decomposing and returning nutrients to the soil. Rather than throwing out these festive vegetables, the Composting Crew collected them in the Grove and returned over a quarter of a ton of pumpkins back to the earth.  

That’s right! After a significant amount of transporting and chopping and weighing, 517 pounds of pumpkins were composted just from this year’s Smashing Pumpkins event, not including other pumpkins received in community bucket drop-offs. The compost pile has doubled in size and has been steaming away as it rapidly breaks down the load of pumpkins. The nutrient-dense soil will be given to the Hoop House and the Jolly Garden once it’s cured in the spring to feed next year’s gardens!  We hope to see you all at the Smashing Pumpkins event next fall! 

Environmental Stewardship Center

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