Restaurants recycle their oyster shells to help reefs

Six Pittsburgh restaurants are part of an effort to return oyster shells to the Chesapeake Bay to combat poor water quality and declining habitats.

Along with Sustainable Pittsburgh, Chef Jessica Lewis of Spirits & Tales atop the Oaklander Hotel has spearheaded the effort to get Pittsburgh restaurants involved.

Spirits & Tales and officials from the Oyster Recovery Partnership (oysterrecovery.org) in Annapolis, Md., will discuss Pittsburgh restaurants’ participation at a press conference Thursday at Spirit & Tales.

The other restaurants — Merchant Oyster Co. in Lawrenceville, Muddy Waters Oyster Bar in East Liberty, Eleven in the Strip District, Off the Hook in Marshall and St. Clair Country Club — are storing their shells in containers made of recycled food products, meaning that recycled garbage is being stored in recycled garbage.

Spirits & Tales fills one of the

35-gallon resealable tubs every three to four months, Ms. Lewis said. But restaurants at which oysters figure more prominently on the menu, such as Muddy Waters and Merchant Oyster Co., can fill eight to 10 tubs in the same amount of time, she said.

Until recently, restaurants in the immediate Chesapeake Bay area have been the only contributors to the effort. Since November, Pittsburgh has been serving as a pilot city to determine whether it’s feasible to transport shells from cities farther away, Ms. Lewis said.

The Pittsburgh establishments join restaurants in Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., along with nonprofits, government partners, retailers and seafood distributors, in saving oyster shells. The shells are taken to a hatchery, where they’re aged and washed. Scientists produce oyster larvae that attach to the recycled shells and grow into new oysters, and then the recycled shells with the baby oysters attached are planted on oyster reefs in the Chesapeake.

The Shell Recycling Alliance, founded in 2010, is one of the programs operated by the Oyster Recovery Partnership to try to rehabilitate the Chesapeake. In its nine years of operation, the alliance has reclaimed 145,000 bushels of shells, enough to support the replanting of 725 million oysters.

Tommy Price, shell recycling operations manager for the Oyster Recovery Partnership, said Pittsburgh restaurants so far have collected 432 bushels of oysters with about another 150 bushels expected at the next pickup, scheduled for Thursday. Each bushel equals about 55 pounds or 9¼ gallons of oyster shells.

“We are making a difference,” Ms. Lewis said.

Oysters help to restore water quality by filtering out silt, sediment and excess nutrients, according to the Oyster Recovery Partnership’s website. The reefs also provide a healthy habitat for fish, crabs and other marine life.

Ms. Lewis encourages other Pittsburgh-area restaurants to join the effort. Government grants and corporate and private donations fund the program, and the Oyster Recovery Partnership handles all the logistics, so it’s free for restaurants to participate. Ms. Lewis sees “getting the community involved in helping to restore the Chesapeake Bay” as something restaurants can do to help support the environment.

Restaurateurs interested in participating should go to shellrecycling.org to sign up.

“Even if restaurants have oysters on the menu [along with a lot of other dishes] and they don’t think they’re going through that many, it makes a difference over time,” Ms. Lewis said, noting each recycled oyster halfshell is a potential home for 10 new baby oysters.

Plus, diners can have the satisfaction of knowing they’re helping to restore the ecosystem when they dine at participating restaurants, Ms. Lewis said.