Pumpkin Smash Playbook

This playbook is a guide to organizing and hosting Pumpkin Smashes, community events that collect pumpkins for composting.

University of Illinois Extension hosted its first Pumpkin Smash in 2019. Since then, the organization has refined the process of planning, funding, and running the event, and they now have a blueprint to help other Extension teams build Pumpkin Smashes in their communities.

Smashes are a fun way to teach people about the importance of composting while keeping pumpkins out of the landfills. They also give Extension organizations a chance to shine a spotlight on the agricultural, environmental and community partnership work they do and reach new communities—particularly in urban areas, where there’s considerable opportunity to increase access to composting and increase Extension’s visibility.

This work is supported by New Technologies for Agriculture Extension grant no. 2020-41595-30123 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.