Pumpkin Waste Festival in Norwich

Slow Food Norwich held the first Pumpkin Waste festival in Norwich last year after being approached by HUBBUB a charity based in London which had already helped organise similar festivals and special events in over twenty cities in the UK and one in the USA in the previous years. We were very happy to be involved in this important project and we contacted the Norwich City Council environment team to aks if they would be willing to help us.

The members of the team were keen to help us with promoting the event and they gave us support and help with distributing posters around the City to raise awareness of the thousands of tons of Pumpkin waste that is discarded after Halloween each year.

We were also helped by Sarah and Rachel who run the The Firepitcamp near Swaffham which is one of our Approved Business scheme members and they then held a very successful and popular Pumpkin Waste festival at their base in Wendling at Halloween to spread the message to their friends and to the local community. 

This year Norwich City Council are setting up special waste collection points across the City in late October and the environment team will also be hosting special events in the city as part of  the Councils year long One Planet Norwich series of special Eco events aimed to educate the wider public in Norwich about sustainable living practices and food waste.
The environment team at Norwich City Council are very involved with making the Pumpkin Waste festival more well known across the city this year and are already working on their plans to promote the event.

Slow Food Norwich are very pleased to have the Council take part in the Pumpkin Waste festival again and hope to work with them in future years both on this important event and other Eco events where we already have an interest as part of the work Slow Food carries out both in the UK and Internationally.

Members of both Slow Food Norwich and Slow Food Anglia are now working on plans for events to be held this Halloween across Norfolk promoting the Pumpkin Waste festival again, we hope to involve more villages and towns in this important and exciting project and believe that the festival will grow in size each year as the public become more informed about the problem of food waste in our society.

We will also be  approaching other community based organisations in Norwich to get them involved in the Pumpkin Waste festival and several of our members have already confirmed their participation in helping with both waste recycling and also promotional events this October.