Each year, the International Compost Awareness Week Committee holds a poster contest to pick a new design for the annual poster. There is a new theme for ICAW, which is highlighted on the poster as well as the dates for ICAW, which will be May 7 – 13, 2023. The contest is open to anyone in the world age 14 or older.

The 2023 International Compost Awareness Week (ICAW) theme is truly a collaborative and international effort. This year, we teamed up with the International Compost Alliance (ICA) to select: For Healthier Soil, Healthier Food…Compost! The theme was chosen based on a serious world-wide issue that every nation, unfortunately, experiences: hunger.

One of the initiatives of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), is Zero Hunger: End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture. As part of the ICAW committee’s global discussion with our international partners around the world, we spoke the same language, and all wanted to promote a unified theme – aligning a topic important to each country while emphasizing our work with compost.

The chosen 2023 theme best reflects the goal of focusing on how compost can have a role in helping feed the world, by making soil healthier which produces healthier food. How does compost help? By recycling organics into compost and using it on our farmlands we create healthy soils that produce healthier food and higher yields. It also reduces the need for fertilizer and pesticides, improves water quality and conserves water, as well as stores carbon in soil – helping to reduce climate change. Compost not only helps the environment but also helps to decrease food shortages experienced around the world. For Healthier Soil, Healthier Food…Compost!