Watermelon Rinds: The Great Summer Dilemma

By Sara Mack, Marketing Manager

Watermelon season is in full swing! If you’ve already eaten your first fresh melon of the season, you know that the rinds have the pesky tendency to take up quite a bit of your compost bucket. Obviously keeping any food scraps out of the landfill is a success in our book, but it can be difficult to fit the rest of your household organics into your bin when half of your space is occupied by waste from a single watermelon! 

We’ve been puzzling over this dilemma, and we’ve compiled a list of resources that might be able to help. As it turns out, there are actually quite a few ways to use a watermelon rind — who knew?! 

Starting off strong, you’ve heard of gazpacho made from watermelon fruit, now get ready for watermelon rind gazpacho! Many of the recipes we found that incorporate watermelon rinds, like this gazpacho from The New York Times, are actually quite similar to those made with the fruit itself. Some of our other favorites were these candied watermelon rinds from Oh Bite It, and even this Indian curry from My Heart Beets. 

The next type of watermelon rind recipe deserves a category of its own. There are countless recipes for pickled watermelon rinds online, and they definitely seem like a good option when it comes to repurposing your rinds sustainably since they only require a few ingredients that you likely already have in your pantry. Check out this pickled rind recipe from Alton Brown that just calls for watermelon rinds, water, sugar, apple cider vinegar, and a few spices! 

Have you ever made a DIY facemask? Turns out watermelon, as well as watermelon rinds, can provide a hydrating effect when blended. We found this face mask recipe from Vogue, and this recipe for watermelon cubes for face sculpting from The Indian Express. This sounds like the perfect antidote to the crazy heat we’ve been having lately in the DMV…

Our final tip isn’t actually a rind DIY, but rather a good last resort when it comes time to try to fit everything into the compost bucket. Chop the rind up into small pieces! This actually can be good advice when it comes to fitting anything bulky in your bin, and it also helps scraps break down faster into finished compost. If you dice up your large organics, you’ll have a better shot shifting things around to make it all fit than you would with an entire hollowed out watermelon half. 

Enjoying watermelon in the summer is unmatched, but knowing that you’re not contributing to landfill waste and you’re helping the environment in the process definitely makes it even sweeter. If you use any of our tips to put more of the melon to use, we want to hear about it! Send us photos and give us a tag on social media.