The annual Pumpkin-Cycle on Nov. 9 collected over 3,000 pounds of pumpkin to be composted. Sophie Burchell / The Forecaster

Pumpkins were tossed, smashed, hammered and piled by Portland residents, all in the name of composting.

On Saturday, Nov. 9, families gathered in the parking lot of Payson Park Little League Field to compost their old Halloween pumpkins and gourds at the city’s annual Pumpkin-Cycle. In its third year, the event was the largest yet, filling a trailer bed with over 3,000 pounds of pumpkin.

The event was run by the city’s Sustainability Office, which also manages the community composting program that encourages Portland residents to drop off their kitchen food scraps to 10 compost collection bins located throughout the city. The Pumpkin-Cycle was created in response to an issue the Sustainability Office encountered annually: every year after Halloween, the city’s compost drop-off sites became overwhelmed with pumpkins, as Portland residents tried to compost their jack-o-lanterns.

“Our bins were tipping over, and so it’s just kind of a nightmare. And we were like, ‘Well, what if we just held an event where we just tried to collect as many pumpkins as we could?’” said Katie Tims, sustainability associate for the city.

“It kind of just started from, like, ‘Hey, let’s solve this problem,’ to now it’s just a really fun, family-friendly event,” she said.

All pumpkins were collected by Garbage to Garden, a composting business in Maine and Massachusetts that manages the city’s composting program’s food scraps. Typically, Garbage to Garden picks up compost at the city’s 10 composting drop-off sites, Portland Public Schools, City Hall and the Barron Center. It also offers private curbside pick-up for residents for $19 a month.

Bridget Braun, events manager for Garbage to Garden, said that events such as Pumpkin-Cycle offer both an incentive for people to go out of their way to compost and an opportunity to educate them about composting.

The collected pumpkins will be composted on a farm in Windham. Sophie Burchell / The Forecaster

This year at the event, Garbage to Garden added hammers for children to smash their old pumpkins and a tarp on the trailer against which pumpkins could be chucked. While many enthusiastic children enjoyed making their jack-o-lanterns explode, parents also joined in, describing the experience as “therapeutic” and “satisfying.”

“This year we added the hammers for the kids to smash, which I think was a good addition. They seem to find it very fun,” said Braun. “It keeps them busy, while also recycling the pumpkins in a little bit more of an eco-friendly way.”

The collected pumpkins will go to Fern Song Farm in Windham, where Garbage to Garden does aerated static pile composting. This method of composting means that food waste, including pumpkins, gets stacked in bunkers with leaves and manure with pipes going through the pile that pump in oxygen, which hastens the breakdown of the waste. It takes 30 days for the compost to break down, said Braun, with an additional 90 days for the compost to cure.

Through this process, Halloween pumpkins can take on a second life as soil, returning their nutrients to the earth.

“I’ve been driving around seeing so many pumpkins that are kind of looking gross. It’s just a great way to keep it out of the trash, because we don’t want those nutrients going to waste when they could be recycled,” said Tims.