The Santa Maria Utilities Department has come up with a fun way to encourage community members to compost their leftover pumpkins.
Attendees brought holiday gourds of all sizes for one last smash before they get composted Saturday.
Some people threw them on the ground while others threw them at a wall with nails.
City officials said the event was created to be a fun way for the community to divert pumpkins from ending in a landfill.
"In order to avoid all these pumpkins going into the landfill, what we thought was much better ways to get it back into our compost to be used throughout the city,” said Dennis Smitherman, the Recreation Services Manager for the City of Santa Maria. “By smashing these pumpkins, we're going to be able to save them from the landfill and thereby better our environment."
This was the second year the City of Santa Maria hosted the event.
If you could not attend the pumpkin smashing event, pumpkins and other food waste may be placed into the organics container for collection, officials said.
