Isla Vista Compost Collective is holding a “Great Pumpkin Pick Up” on Nov. 7 to collect pumpkins from Halloween for compost.

Residents put pumpkins outside of their homes to be composted. Photo courtesy IVCC

“We’re trying to get as many people as possible to sign up to have their pumpkins or jack-o’-lanterns picked up from their house,” Isla Vista Community Services District (IVCSD) Isla  Vista Program Manager Jenna Norton said.

The Isla Vista Compost Collective (IVCC) is a division of IVCSD. The pickup will begin at 10 a.m., and I.V. residents interested in the service can sign-up through a Google form. 

IVCSD staff plan to ride through I.V. on electric bikes with trailers attached, collecting pumpkins and dropping them off at IVCC compost piles, located at St. Michael’s University Church and University United Methodist Church of Isla Vista. Residents may also drop-off any sort of compost themselves at these 24/7 locations.

Norton started the initiative this year because she felt Halloween can be a “very wasteful holiday.” Norton expressed that they were concerned that people may not know how to properly dispose of their compostable Halloween decorations.

“When it comes to decorations, costumes, pumpkins, just tons and tons of waste gets created. So we’re really trying, as a whole, to encourage residents to think about that and be more sustainable with their choices during Halloween,” Norton said. “And, of course, one of those choices would be to compost their pumpkins rather than throwing them in the trash or in the street.”

Norton said organic waste, like food scraps, will be turned into compost that can be used in the local community gardens through the Edible Campus Program.

“It’s just kind of creating a closed loop in Isla Vista’s food scraps, rather than going out of Isla Vista to a random landfill and contributing to climate change, it ends up in our local stalls, and the compost and soils are all created there, and then we use that to then grow our own food,” Norton said. 

IVCSD Community Programs and Engagement Director Myah Mashhadialireza said that their biggest challenge in encouraging people to compost is educating people on its importance. According to Mashhadialireza, this is especially relevant because Isla Vista is considered a “food desert,” meaning there is restricted access to healthy, affordable food options. The food gardens in I.V. emphasize the importance of community gardens in our community.

“Most people are low income in our community, and so we also are part of a food desert. So it’s all of these contributing factors that not only make this something that’s good for the planet but also make the compost collective a huge social justice effort to try and reduce the waste we have to help the food insecurity that we have in our community,” Mashhadialireza said.

A version of this article appeared on p. 4 of the Nov. 7, 2024 edition of the Daily Nexus.