NEW ORLEANS — For all of you oyster lovers, where do you think all of those shells go when you are done feasting on the gulf’s delicious treasures?
At Borgne, a New Orleans restaurants in the CBD, they are keen on recycling their oyster remains to help rebuild the coastal reefs.
Gabrielle Oliva, chef at Borgne, says that New Orleans folks and tourists eat a lot of of oysters.
“We probably go through about two to four hundred oysters everyday. We shuck them to order, we serve them with some cocktail, ponzu, some horse raddish, some lemon,” says Oliva.
When your table is cleared, servers take the shells to the back and dispense them into a special oyster recycling bin.
Seventeen restaurants have teamed up with the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana.
It’s an organization that has created the Oyster Shell Recycling Program.
“We’re able to take this valuable natural resource that, you know, people use everyday and keep it out of the waste stream and return it back to our coastal waters,” says restoration programs director Deb Visco Abibou.
The organization takes in about 50 tons of shell a month and turns them into reefs.
“Just by eating oysters at our partner restaurants, everyone gets to contribute to restore the coast,” says Visco Abibou.
So basically, it’s our civic duty to eat oysters.
Visco Abibou says it’s a delicious way to help restore our coast.
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