RIVER FOREST, Ill. (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — In suburban River Forest, residents were recently among the many in the Chicago area who have discovered a simple truth: The only thing more fun than decorating pumpkins is wrecking them.
It happened at Roosevelt Middle School, where the old and the young gathered, grabbed a sledgehammer and spent an afternoon walloping pumpkins — which were then composted to help the earth.
Rusty Gundrum was one of the organizers.
“Yeah, we have the community coming out to compost all of our old pumpkins, and everyone's pitching in, picking up around the neighborhood, dropping off, and the kids are having a blast just smashing the pumpkins to smithereens here,” he said. “Very carefully.”
One of the younger participants was Julia Olson, who showed no mercy for her former orange friends.
“I'm smashing pumpkins,” she told WBBM. “I'm doing this so the pumpkins don't go in the trash and release a greenhouse gas.”
About 1,200 pumpkins were smashed at the River Forest event, which was put on with help from volunteers with the Sustainability Club and the Green For Good Committee.
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