Pumpkins can also be recycled in street garden garbage carts without bags, even in areas of Ventura County where residents are required to bag their food waste. , residents put all food in the yard garbage carts, but no bags anyway, while in the rest of the county, Harrison Industries or WM (formerly WM) provides curbside collection services. waste management), neglecting your bag can feel like breaking the rules.
Typically, most Ventura County homes keep food and garden clippings separate so that the local composting facility doesn’t violate permit requirements. In two years, the Agromin-operated site at the Limoneira Farm near Santa Paula will have the facility ready to receive and compost food waste along with garden clippings. On the other hand, if the compost pile contains large amounts of food, the facility could face regulatory penalties. But according to Sean DeVry, manager of the Ventura County Department of Environmental Health, regulators now exclude whole or diced pumpkins from being considered food waste.
Meanwhile, bags of food collected by companies associated with Harrison Industries were separated from garden clippings at Gold Coast Recycling and Transfer in Ventura and collected by the cities of Oxnard and Port Hueneme. Food bags are pulled from the Del Norte Regional conveyor belt. Recycling and forwarding at Oxnard. Bags of food collected by WM in garden clippings are pulled and processed by Agromin. In either case, until a local facility is authorized to handle the food, the food is separated from the yard clippings into bags, then separated from the bags at the Simi Valley Landfill and trucked out of the county for composting. must be carried by
It might have been more practical to wait for the local food composting facility to be permitted, but state mandates could not afford a delay.
California Senate Bill 1383, passed in 2016, required all cities and counties to implement various programs for diversion of organic matter, including food waste collection from households. The primary purpose of this law is to reduce climate change emissions by reducing the amount of spoilage in landfills. Other possible benefits of resulting composting include recycling of soil nutrients, water conservation, business development, agriculture and garden improvements, and reduction of pesticide and fertilizer pollution.
Garden clippings and garbage collection, trucking and disposal create other types of pollution, so some people choose home composting instead. You also get the benefits of gardening. You can fortify your own soil and benefit your own garden with the resulting compost.
But pumpkins have a lot of seeds. Operators of commercial composting facilities keep their compost piles at temperatures above 130 degrees for several days, preventing the seeds from sprouting in the finished compost, so it’s no problem if the garden waste cart contains pumpkin seeds. There is none.
If you plan to compost your pumpkin at home, it may be better to scoop out the seeds first. Roast the seeds for a delicious treat, or if you need pumpkins next October, dry this year’s seeds and plant them in June and he in July. It takes 90 to 120 days for most pumpkins to reach full maturity. Meanwhile, as the pumpkin grows, it creates a low-water vine, sometimes up to 20 feet long. One pumpkin plant typically produces 2-5 pumpkins, so you may have enough pumpkins to recycle the following year.
Of course, the pumpkin recycling tips above don’t apply to artisanal pumpkin decorators who use artificial items that are prohibited in the official Jack o’Lantern contest. , glued-on beads, studs and rivets are not welcome in garden waste recycling carts or home compost bins. Ditch those extreme creations. No one wants the glow of Halloween pumpkins contaminating the compost of spring flowerbeds.
David Goldstein, Environmental Resources Analyst for the Ventura County Public Works Agency, can be reached at 805-658-4312 or david.goldstein@ventura.org.
