International Composting Awareness Week

International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW) is the largest and most comprehensive education initiative of the compost industry. It is celebrated nationwide [USA] and in other countries each year during the first full week of May. 

The goal of ICAW is to work together to raise public awareness on why we all should be composting our organics and using compost to create healthier soil.

The program includes poster and video contests in the fall and activities and events held during the week in May. Throughout the week of ICAW, events are held all over the country and the world with community, school, government and business planning different activities to encourage and celebrate composting – all types of composting – from backyard to large–scale

Theme for ICAW 2024: COMPOST... Nature’s Climate Champion!

The 2024 International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW) theme is truly a collaborative and international effort. Again this year, we teamed up with the International Compost Alliance (ICA), which includes compost associations from around the world, to select: COMPOST... Nature’s Climate Champion! The theme was chosen by participating international partners incorporating the collective focus on one of the initiatives of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which is “Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”

The 2024 theme best reflects the UN goal by highlighting the role compost plays in fighting climate change. Those roles include:

• Decreasing methane: Methane, a greenhouse gas twenty-five times as powerful as carbon dioxide, can be significantly reduced through the recycling of organics instead of their being landfilled.
• Helping with climate change mitigation: Compost offers a significant answer to climate change mitigation. Compost’s return to the soil serves as a “carbon bank,” helping to store carbon thereby removing it from the atmosphere.
• Reducing fertilizer inputs, reducing 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.

#National
#International
#Compost
#ClimateChangeImpacts
#Recycle
#Sustainability