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!

Meet the ICAW 2022 Poster Contest Winner

This year’s winner of the ICAW 2022 Poster Contest is Angelo Esquivel. Out of hundreds and hundreds of entries from around the world, his entry was chosen. Angelo is an artist and graphic designer from Sacramento, CA. Here's what he wrote in his application explaining why he decided to enter the contest.

“I have been working for the past years with agriculture programs where we educate communities in the Sacramento area about different topics, and one of those is composting and its importance in creating healthier soil that will generate healthier food. Also in the last two years, I have been working with a food co-op where composting is a big part of it. That was the reason that caught my attention that I could use my skills in graphic design to help the community. The poster that I created expresses the use of regenerative practices in agriculture. it shows a farmer using composting into the crops where it creates a regenerative cycle and better crops.”

We received so many wonderful poster design entries. Out of all the entries, these were the top 14. Congratulations to these top 14 entries who rated so high with everyone who voted and thank you to everyone who took the time to enter the contest. Hopefully it was fun to create your design and it helped a lot of people from throughout the world learn more about ICAW and the many benefits of compost use and organics recycling.

For questions, please send an email to info@compostfoundation.org