2024 CAMPAIGN RESULTS
The scary truth about
pumpkins!
The UK throws 6.4 million tonnes of edible food away every year with a value of £21.8 billion (WRAP, 2023)
This Halloween, a chilling 24.5 million pumpkins were set to go to waste (Censuswide, 2024) that’s a heck of a lot of pumpkin pie.
The solution:
Food waste is often a hidden problem, and we’ve been using Halloween to bring it into the spotlight! 73% of edible food waste takes place in people’s homes and occasions like Christmas and Halloween can create a lot of food waste.
Our Eat Your Pumpkin campaign shines a ghostly glow on pumpkin waste with ideas for simple actions that build new behaviours and help people reduce food waste all year-round.
This year we targeted parents of young children with a social campaign, free pumpkin decorating stickers in all UK Starbucks stores, media and influencer collaborations and a PR campaign.
To bring the digital campaign to life, we funded 109 community groups to host 211 events to get people together to decorate, cook and eat their pumpkins.
We wanted to inspire people to decorate their pumpkins instead of carving them, keeping them fresh for eating later. They can then turn them into a tasty treat, when they’re ready. And hopefully, that leftoverloving habit sticks all year round!
The campaign reached people over 24.9 million times and brought communities together to have fun and save 10.5 tonnes of pumpkins from the bin.
2024 campaign reach
24.9 million total reach Podcast collaborations with Table Manners and Shagged Married Annoyed
A new campaign film on All4
4.1m views of Hubbub’s influencer content collaborations A media partnership with parenting network and coverage from:
25,107 opens of our online recipe book
2024 campaign impact
211 community events with 9814 visitors
People who saw the campaign were...
tonnes of food waste saved by community
Anticipated pumpkin waste almost halved:
2.3x more likely to have decorated their pumpkin, leaving it intact to eat later* 20% more likely to eat their pumpkin*
Ending up in the bin post campaign** 12.8m
*The 7Stars research, October-December 2024, pre-wave n=1008, post-wave n=2217
**Censuswide polling, September-November 2024, pre-wave n=2000, post-wave n=2000
1.7x more likely to encourage others to take actions for the environment
Our influencer collaborations were viewed over 4.1 million times and generated over 68,000 likes, shares, saves and comments.
We funded 109 groups to hold pumpkin events across the UK
211 events
9,814 attendees Grants of up to £800
10.5 tonnes food waste saved, equivalent to 12.2 tonnes of CO2
“The event was fab! My stomach is full of lovely pumpkin, my heart is full for community events like this and my head is full of ideas that I can do at home with pumpkin.”
- Seema,
Transition Dundee
“By coming to the event and the pumpkin cooking class I am now taking part in another group which had helped my mental health.”
- Amanda, visitor to Kirkshaws Neighbourhood Centre
“As someone who spends a chunk of her work time fundraising - and reporting - it’s so refreshing and helpful to have funders who are easy, straightforward application forms, simple monitoring and you’ve always been really easy to contact for extra info.”
- Anna Jacklin, Monty’s Community Hub
Our campaign generated lots of press... And our spooky message was shared far and wide.
...including Delicious and Sainsbury’s magazines, First News, The Week Junior, PR Week and lots of local/regional press.
We teamed up with Netmums to reach young families. Our media partnership reached people 5.6 million times
We teamed up with podcast hosts Jessie and Lennie Ware (Table Manners) and Chris and Rosie Ramsey (Shagged, Married, Annoyed) on ads, reaching 488,556 people 814,00 times.
Our video on demand campaign ran on All4 throughout October delivering 1,142,066 impressions alongside programmes including
Married At First Sight UK, The Great British Bake Off, Gogglebox, Taskmaster and Made In Bondi.
Starbucks stores gave away over 217,000 spooky sticker packs to encourage people to decorate and eat their pumpkins.
The Eat Your Pumpkin campaign brings the flavour (and frights!) each year to inspire people to eat their pumpkins and get people thinking about food waste. Support from Starbucks has allowed Hubbub to go bigger and bolder year-on-year, and complements our wider work on food waste including:
1. The Community Fridge Network – a network of over 700 Community Fridges which bring people together to share food, meet up, learn new skills and prevent fresh food from going to waste.
2. Food Connect - a food redistribution service using zero emissions vehicles, supporting established food projects to use e-cargo bikes and e-vans to share surplus food from local businesses within the community.
3. The Eat It Up Fund – a grant fund fuelling innovations that reduce edible food waste, ensuring food serves its purpose – to be eaten.
To find out more about Hubbub’s work and our impact, head to hubbub.org.uk or drop us an email at hello@hubbub.org.uk.