Eat Your Pumpkin 2020 | Press Release | Hubbub

Press release, [embargo] Thursday 8th October 2020

Trick or treating may be cancelled, but it won’t stop us carving pumpkins!

New research suggests number of households trick or treating 30% lower than last year, but a frightful 12.8 million pumpkins still set to go to waste

Trick or treating may be off the cards this Halloween, with almost only 1 in 5 (19%) households who usually celebrate the tradition saying they are happy to welcome trick or treaters on their on their doorstep this year due to the threat of Covid-19.

However according to research commissioned by environmental charity Hubbub which surveyed 3,000 UK residents, other Halloween traditions are set to continue as normal with 24 million pumpkins estimated to be carved this year. Horrifyingly over half of those1 (12.8 million) are set to get carved but not eaten - this is enough to make a bowl of pumpkin soup for everyone in Britain!

Laid end to end, the uneaten pumpkins would stretch 2,816km, which is almost exactly the same distance as travelling from John O’Groats to Land’s End – and back again! (1,407km one way)1 Hubbub today launches its annual Pumpkin Rescue campaign to help tackle a potential food waste horror-show and inspire the public to value the humble pumpkin. The new figures suggest 1 in 7 people who celebrate Halloween don’t even think of pumpkin as food and only 42% (2 in 5) realise you can eat a carving pumpkin from the supermarket.

Tessa Tricks of Hubbub, said: “Pumpkins are a valuable source of food and are not just for decoration. Even if it’s labelled a carving pumpkin, you can still eat it and it will taste delicious with spices like chilli, ginger or cumin. We know that over lockdown many people developed a new-found love of cooking from scratch and are generally valuing food more, so we’re urging people to try a new recipe this Halloween and make the most of every part of this nutritious and versatile food. Every pumpkin eaten is a step towards tackling the 6.6 million tonnes of food and drink that is thrown away from UK homes every year3.”

Chef Nena Foster who is supporting the campaign, said: “Pumpkin is really versatile - it goes particularly well in savoury dishes like soups, stews, chilli and risottos, as well as in sweet bakes like pies, cakes, scones and biscuits. Pumpkin is even delicious fermented.

And you can use almost every part, for the skin, flesh, seeds and insides. If you’re carving a pumpkin this Halloween with your children, you can also use the bits you’d usually throw away to get cooking!”

And it’s not just eating the inside of the pumpkin that will make a difference. Hubbub is also urging people to compost their carved pumpkins, put them out for the birds or dispose of them in the food waste collection, as the research suggests two million pumpkins will end up in the general household bin which will produce harmful greenhouse gases if sent to landfill.

Over the coming weeks, the Pumpkin Rescue campaign will be sharing a range of Halloween-themed content including inspiration for spooky, sustainable and safe activities for Halloween; simple costume ideas; inspiring Halloween recipes; guidance on how to choose the perfect pumpkins to grow and eat and stalk-to-skin cooking for parents and children via a Facebook Live and IGTV with chefs Nena Foster, and Mark Breen. There will also be a cooking and carving competition.

Visit https://www.hubbub.org.uk/eat-your-pumpkin to find out more. #EatYourPumpkin

**** ENDS ****

For more information contact the Hubbub team at Barley Communications: Katie Raby katie.raby@barleycommunications.co.uk 07896533547 Laura Harrison laura.harrison@barleycommunications.co.uk 07525 068378

NOTES TO EDITORS 1. Data in more detail The survey was carried out by Censuswide in September 2020 and involved a nationally representative sample of 3,000 UK residents.

• 50% said they have a Halloween tradition/celebrate Halloween • 47% of households who celebrate Halloween trick or treated last year but only 33% plan to this year

• Only 19% said trick or treaters would be welcome at their door this year

• Number of pumpkins to be carved this year: 27.8 million households (ONS 2019 figure) x 50% who celebrate Halloween x mean number of pumpkins carved 1.7 = 23.63 million

• Number of pumpkins expected to be carved and not eaten (if they follow same pattern as 2019): 23.63 million x 54% = 12.76 million

• Distance equivalent of wasted pumpkins: 12.8m pumpkins x 22cm = 2,816km, based

on the average carving pumpkin being between 20-24cm in diameter (distance by road from Land’s End to John O’Groats is 1,407km)

• 16% put their pumpkin in the general household bin last year - 2 million pumpkins are expected to go in the bin this year

• 14% of those who celebrate Halloween don’t think of pumpkins as food (1 in 7) • 42% (2 in 5) of all respondents realise you can eat a carving pumpkin from the supermarket

2. Today’s data Vs 2016 – a shift On a positive note, things are improving as the same survey was carried out in 2016 and found that seven out of ten pumpkins were carved and not eaten – that’s 15 million pumpkins (Vs 5 out of 10). Over half of all respondents didn’t think of pumpkins as food in 2016 (vs 1 in 7 of those who celebrate Halloween today). One in three mistakenly thought that a carving pumpkin could not be eaten (vs almost 3 in 5 today).

3. Food waste in the UK Almost 70% of the total amount of food thrown away in the UK comes from our homes.

Over a year, 6.6 million tonnes of food and drink is thrown away, and nearly three quarters (70%) of this is food and drink we could have eaten. Fruit and veg make up 19% of avoidable household food waste.

Food that could have been eaten but gets thrown away (4.5 million tonnes) is worth around £14 billion (£13.8 billion). This is around £60 per month for the average family with children.

If we all stop wasting food that could have been eaten, the benefit to the planet would be the equivalent of taking 1 in 5 cars off the road.

Source: WRAP https://wrap.org.uk/sites/files/wrap/Food_%20surplus_and_waste_in_the_ UK_key_facts_Jan_2020.pdf

ABOUT HUBBUB Hubbub is an award-winning charity that inspires ways of living that are good for the environment. Hubbub designs campaigns that make environmental action desirable; disrupting the status quo to raise awareness, nudge behaviours and share systems.

Hubbub have transformed the approach people take towards communicating environmental issues and since 2014 they have built collaborations with over 700 organisations, from international businesses to local authorities and community groups.

This includes bringing together all the major coffee cup retailers to collect and recycle 5 million coffee cups in 1 year, and 26 businesses to improve recycling on-the-go in Leeds. Hubbub designed IKEA’s ‘Live LAGOM’, the world’s biggest consumer sustainable behaviour change campaign. Hubbub also runs campaigns to reduce food waste, tackle litter and promote sustainable fashion. Their Food waste campaigns include #FoodSavvy a collaboration with Norfolk and Suffolk councils which aims to reduce food waste inline with the SDGs and a network of 100 community fridges. https://www.hubbub.org.uk/ Twitter: @hubbubuk Facebook: @HubbubUK Instagram: @helloHubbub LinkedIn: Hubbub-UK