I hate to burst your bubble — or, er, smash your jack-o-lantern? — but most of the 1.91 billion pounds of pumpkins grown annually in the US end up in landfill.
While the vegetable is packed with fiber, and its seeds are full of protein, most of the pumpkins we produce never get eaten — especially when it comes to the Howden pumpkin, which is the most commonly decorated at Halloween and the least tasty.
The majority of Halloween pumpkins — 1.3 billion pounds, in fact — end up in the trash with silly faces carved into them, and then make their way to landfills, where they generate greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
If you're feeling sufficiently spooked by all of those stats, here are a few alternatives to tossing your pumpkins in the trash: