Dear Restaurants!

If you offer oysters or clams on your restaurant menu, your trash bins are likely filled with heavy shells. These shells are probably a nuisance to your kitchen staff and to the waste management company that serves your business. Our shell recycling program operating in Groton, including downtown Mystic, will make your operations easier because we will take these shells out of your trash bins. Your kitchen staff and the waste company will love it, we promise!

Here are the cornerstones of the restaurant-oriented shell collection plan:

• All supplies, bucket sanitation, and shell transportation from the restaurants to the curing site will be at no cost to you.
• Your kitchen staff will be trained by the shell recycling program staff.
• Your restaurant will receive sanitized five-gallon buckets with lids.
• Your staff will be setting shells aside into these buckets and, when full placing them near your dumpsters for a scheduled pickup.
• The pickup schedule will be adjusted to your needs.
• Your restaurant will be highlighted on this page and on our social media.
• If you want to host a fundraiser to support the operation of this program and help spread the knowledge about oyster restoration while offering a great time to your guests, we will collaborate with you!

You may ponder why we want your shells.  The answer is simple: Shells are the favorite material to which baby oysters like to stick! With each shell recovered from the trash, your old stinky shells are put through the curing procedure (which our program will do!) and put back into Long Island Sound (we will also do that with other restoration partners!). Shell recycling is nothing new in the U.S. – shell recycling occurs regularly in other coastal states, including New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and almost all other coastal Atlantic states. Please help southeastern Connecticut recycle shells to help restore the shellfish in our waters!

By partnering with our program, you will skip the hassle of dealing with heavy shells, you will help lower the carbon footprint (trucking away these heavy shells to some distant landfill emits lots of CO2) you will help restore oysters in Long Island Sound, and through this, you will help create a new habitat for many marine animals that simply love hanging out in oyster reefs!

Are you sold on the idea? If yes, that is fantastic news, and please get in touch with us. Are you still not sure and want to learn more? Please reach out.

Oyster farmers and restaurants supporting Groton-Mystic Shell Recycling Program: