Louisiana's Marsh, Rebuilt From Restaurant Oyster Shells

Louisiana has lost roughly 2,000 square miles of coast in fifty years, and every metre of marsh that erodes takes storm protection and fish nursery with it. The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana, founded in 1988, launched an Oyster Shell Recycling Program in 2014 that collects shell from New Orleans and Baton Rouge restaurants, cures it in the sun to kill pathogens, then bags it and places it as living shoreline where marsh meets open water. Larval oysters settle on the old shell, the reef grows itself, and the wave energy that was undercutting the marsh edge is absorbed before it lands. The programme has recycled over 17 million pounds of shell and built more than 10,000 feet of living shoreline, with volunteers and Gulf Coast fishers doing much of the hauling and planting.