Service on More Than a Cracker

When the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana's first began to price out the transport of recycled oyster shells from restaurants in New Orleans to a staging point in Buras, Louisiana, it faced one major logistical hurdle that oyster recycling programs in other states didn't: sheer volume.

"Restaurants just go though so much shell. And conversely, they don't have the space to store shell," said CRCL's Restoration Program Director Hilary Collis. The problem is particularly apparent in the older parts of the city, where many of the partnering restaurants are located. The stench of oyster shells moldering under the Louisiana sun—bait for flies and a deterrent for eaters—meant that CRCL had to figure out a way to collect the waste more often than the out-of-state recycling programs after which it was modeling itself.

Currently, CRCL collects shells from twelve New Orleans restaurants, picking up anywhere from three to ten 35-gallon recycling bins at each restaurant, five days a week. The oysters are then sent to a holding site in New Orleans East and moved to a larger rolloff for transport, three times a week, to the main holding site in Buras.

With an initial $1 million in seed funds provided by a project grant from Shell, CRCL was able to map out these collection procedures, the primary cost associated with the project. Once the shell actually arrives at Buras, costs diminish, since CRCL will muster its army of volunteers (it has a substantial network already established thanks to its  Habitat Restoration Project) to bag the shells for later deployment in the Biloxi Marsh, just south of the Caernarvon Diversion area and Lake Athanasio. There, they will build a half-mile, almost-natural oyster reef.

CRCL kicked off the collection program at the 2014 New Orleans Oyster Festival, when it amassed 10,000 pounds of shell. Since then, it has collected 825 tons, enough to finally begin reef construction.

Collis explained that Louisiana currently suffers from a shell deficit, meaning that 60% of the shell removed from its coastal waters are lost to landfills. Because oyster reef growth depends on the presence of shell, environmentalists and oystermen have had to come up with artificial solutions to promote reef growth, trademarked technologies that use crushed concrete or limestone. But, in partnership with the Nature Conservancy, which has been conducting oyster reef-building projects for years, CRCL will be able to make a sizable dent in one of their longterm goals—maximizing the amount of shell being returned to Louisiana's coastal waters, positively affecting all sorts of factors besides oyster production: creating fantastic fish habitat, providing a buffer against storm surge, and allowing the buildup of land behind the reefs. 

Shell's $1 million donation will keep the project operating for twelve to eighteen months, so CRCL will be exploring additional funding avenues in order to maintain the current program and possibly fund its expansion to other cities. Currently, CRCL is exploring its viability in Baton Rouge.

Look for a call for volunteers in October, when Collis said they will likely start a multi-month process of bagging shells at Buras.