Environmental and recycling businesses, organizations, community groups and individuals around the U.S. are making plans to celebrate the annual International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW) coming up the week of May 5 – 11.
The goal of ICAW is to build public awareness on the benefits of compost use and recycling organics – including food scraps and yard waste.
ICAW is promoted across the country and worldwide by holding different types of group activities and events. Volunteers in different states spend the week working to educate their local citizens in their towns, cities and statewide about composting by holding different onsite programs and online workshops and trainings. From compost giveaways to touring composting facilities to planting gardens, ICAW is a fun and educational program that annually reaches thousands of people.
Each year a new theme is chosen for ICAW. This year’s theme is “COMPOST…Nature’s Climate Champion!” The chosen 2024 theme focuses on the role compost plays helping with a shift to climate strategies.
Compost can help by:
- Decreasing methane: A greenhouse gas more than 25 times as impactful as carbon dioxide, methane can be significantly reduced through recycling organics.
- Mitigating changes: Compost’s return to the soil serves as a “carbon bank,” helping to store carbon.
- Reducing fertilizer inputs: Compost helps to reduce the pollution created to manufacture those inputs.
- Increasing resilience: Compost helps to increase resilience to the effects of climate change such as drought and extreme weather.
International Compost Awareness Week, a program run in the U.S. by the Compost Research & Education Foundation, is the largest and most comprehensive education initiative of the compost industry. It is celebrated nationwide and in other countries each year during the first full week of May. ICAW was started in Canada in 1995. Since then, ICAW has continued to grow as more people, businesses, municipalities, schools and organizations are recognizing the importance of composting food scrapes and yard waste and using compost to create healthier soil.
More information on ICAW can be found by clicking here.
