Wheaton residents can drop off their old jack-o'-lanterns for composting at the city's annual Pumpkin Smash on Saturday, Nov. 7.
The event runs from 9 a.m. to noon at Commuter Parking Lot 9, at Liberty Drive and Carlton Avenue, according to a City of Wheaton notice. Pumpkins will be smashed onsite and later composted.
The city's Environmental Improvement Commission hosts the drop-off in partnership with SCARCE, a recycling and composting education nonprofit. The organization's full name is School and Community Assistance for Recycling and Composting Education. Patch also covered the Wheaton event details.
Residents should remove all decorations from their pumpkins before dropping them off, the city said.
SCARCE and the cities of Wheaton and Elmhurst launched the first Pumpkin Smash collections in 2014, diverting more than 9 tons of pumpkins from landfills that year, according to SCARCE's website. The program has since expanded well beyond its Illinois roots. By 2025, SCARCE counted more than 125 Pumpkin Smash sites across the state and around the country.
Across all of those sites in 2025, participants composted more than 200 tons of pumpkins and reduced greenhouse gas emissions by an estimated 144 tons of CO2 equivalent, SCARCE reported. Since 2014, the program has composted more than 3.2 million pounds of pumpkins nationwide.
Pumpkins are about 90% water, which returns moisture and nutrients to soil when composted, according to the city. Composting also keeps organic waste out of landfills, where decomposing food generates methane, SCARCE noted on its website.
Residents looking for other SCARCE drop-off locations beyond Wheaton can search by ZIP code on SCARCE's website.
