Malden City Council Members host new “Pumpkin SMASH” event

By Annie Sarlin

Going to school on a Saturday might be a nightmare to many students, but the opportunity to smash their Halloween pumpkins motivated many to return to the Linden STEAM Academy on Saturday, Nov. 2. The air smelled faintly of overripe produce as families and Malden residents gathered in the school parking lot to throw their jack-o’-lanterns into a compost truck for the city’s first “Pumpkin SMASH.”

Malden City Council members Jadeane Sica and Craig Spadafora, in coalition with the city of Malden, hosted the event to encourage people to compost their pumpkins instead of throwing them away.

“Councilor Sica and I, we do these events throughout the year, we do a clothing drive, we do Community Safety Day, so we try to do new and fun things,” said Spadafora. “Not only is it [the “Pumpkin SMASH”] a fun event, but it also helps us take pumpkins out of the waste and… recycle in a proper way.”

The truck came from Black Earth Compost, a company that collects waste from homes, schools, and other places, and then turns it into soil that they both sell and return to customers they collect from.

“I hope to accomplish more soil and less waste,” said Sica. “People not throwing this [the pumpkins] in the trash and getting it to be recycled and turned into soil is amazing.”

To make the smashing more of a game, the truck featured three Halloween-themed targets: a ghost, a minion and a jack-o’-lantern. As attendees threw their pumpkins into the truck, they tried to knock over the characters.

The initial idea for the “Pumpkin SMASH” came from Sica, who saw a flier for a similar event and decided to bring it to Malden.

“I always get nervous when I do an event for the first time because you don’t know what to expect, but I’m happy with the turnout,” Sica said.

While the Council members designed the event to be fun for kids and families, it attracted some adults as well, including local Courtney Phillips.

“I carved a pumpkin just so I could smash it today,” said Phillips.

Phillips shared that after going through a breakup, throwing a pumpkin provided an outlet for her to express her frustrations.

For those who missed the chance to show off their best throw while sustainably discarding their Halloween decor, the “Pumpkin SMASH” will return to Malden next year, according to Sica.

Annie Sarlin is a journalism student at Emerson College. Her work appears as part of a collaborative partnership between the “Community News Reporting” class taught by Mark Micheli at Emerson College and the Neighborhood View editorial staff.