Aberdeenshire residents urged to recycle Halloween pumpkins
Aberdeenshire residents have been urged to recycle their Halloween pumpkin food waste.
More than a fifth of what ends up in the region’s kerbside black-lid bins is food waste, which spikes at this time of year.
Aberdeenshire Council is asking residents to recycle pumpkins using their free food waste caddies.
Recycling leftovers using the caddies helps the environment in several ways:
• It supports sustainable farming by turning food waste into digestate, which becomes fertiliser for agriculture.
• The biogases created from the recycled food waste are used for heat, power, or even biofuel for vehicles.
• Some food waste is also converted into compost for local farms.
Councillor Alan Turner, chairman of the council’s infrastructure services committee, said: "Halloween is a great time to be creative - not just with costumes, but with pumpkins too.
Pumpkin recycling tips are:
• Remove any decorations before recycling to help avoid contamination.
• Chop up old pumpkins into free food waste caddies.
• Whole, still fresh, pumpkins can be placed on top of food bins for recycling.
Food waste is collected each week from the kerbside and residents can get an indoor and outdoor food waste caddy for free from their local recycling centre or service point if theirs is broken or if they need more than one.
Food waste bag liners for the caddies can also be collected from household recycling centres, council libraries, or people can tie one to their outdoor food caddy and the collection crew will leave a new roll where they have stock available.
Reducing food waste and recycling instead not only helps the environment - it helps to subsidise the costs of disposing of non-recyclable waste, which has been increasing steadily over recent years.