Submitted by Haddam Sustainability Committee
(August 13, 2023) — Each year, the International Compost Awareness Week Committee holds a poster contest to pick a new design for the annual poster. There is always a new theme for ICAW, which is highlighted on the poster, as well as the dates for Compost Awareness Week. (The dates for 2024 are May 5th to the 11th). The poster contest is open to anyone from anywhere in the world ages 14 or older. The video contest is for ages 10 – 13. The poster shown below is the 2023 contest winner.
The Compost Awareness Committee has once again teamed up with the International Compost Alliance (ICA) to select the theme for 2024: “Compost…Nature’s Climate Champion!” The theme was chosen by participating international partners incorporating one of the initiatives of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals program, which is to “take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.”
The 2024 theme best reflects the U.N. goal by highlighting the role compost plays in fighting climate change. Those roles include:
- Decreasing methane, a greenhouse gas twenty-five times as powerful as carbon dioxide, that can be significantly reduced through the recycling of organics instead of their being landfilled.
- Helping with 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 negative effects of climate change such as drought and extreme weather.
- See the link below for details on the poster and video contest rules.
