Annual food waste in Maine emits as much greenhouse gas as nearly 400,000 cars, study finds • Maine Morning Star

Snell Family Farm’s stand at the Portland Farmer’s Market. (AnnMarie Hilton/ Maine Morning Star)

The food wasted in Maine annually emits as much greenhouse gas as 398,235 cars driven for one year, which researchers now know thanks to a novel study completed earlier this year.

That equates to 361,000 tons — or about 520 pounds for every person in the state — of wasted and lost food every year, based on a first-of-its-kind study the Maine Department of Environmental Protection asked the University of Maine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions to complete. The study was conducted from December 2023 to April 2024.

“We have been saying for so long we need to get data on how much food waste and loss is being generated in our state,” said Susanne Lee, a faculty fellow at the Mitchell Center.

The study not only provides concrete data, but can be used to inform future policies and plans for addressing climate change in Maine, Lee said. Though there were estimates before, this data allows the state to see where the waste is coming from geographically and by industry sector.

The study found that the majority of Maine’s food waste is generated in households, particularly in the more population-dense, southern part of the state. Residential waste combined with loss in the agriculture sector accounts for more than 60% of all food waste and loss in the state. Aroostook County is the highest contributor of agricultural waste.

Commercial food waste — largely from grocery stores and food manufacturing — makes up most of the rest of the waste, the study found. Given their high population and concentration of businesses, Cumberland and York counties have the most potential to curb that sort of waste.

Perhaps the most surprising part of the study — and something likely overlooked in the previous estimates, Lee said — is the way seasonal industries and tourism drive up waste in the summer months. Maine’s population surges from 1.3 million to 15 million during that period bringing more people to feed and more waste.

Food waste and loss comes in a variety of forms like the food forgotten in the back of the refrigerator that gets tossed in the trash or a bumper crop that a farmer isn’t able to harvest completely.

However, Lee clarified that scraps put into a landfill are more detrimental to the environment than unpicked crops that get tilled back into the land, ultimately nourishing the soil.

Food starts to create methane gas the moment it begins to spoil, Lee said, and continues to emit the heat-trapping gas as it sits in a landfill. While that warming can negatively affect the environment, Lee said food that never even leaves the farm misses an opportunity to feed the one in eight Mainers who face hunger, according to Feeding America data.

The first iteration of the state’s climate action plan, known as “Maine Won’t Wait,” focused on changes like electric vehicles and installing heat pumps in homes, but Lee said the research center talked with the state’s climate council about the importance of addressing food waste and its environmental implications.

A draft version of the updated climate plan published earlier this summer includes cutting food waste and loss in half by 2030.

The Maine Climate Council has until Dec. 1 to update the four-year climate action plan that outlines strategies for reducing carbon emissions and introducing cleaner energy sources in the state.

Outside of the climate action plan, the study also provides more information for potential legislation in the future. Last legislative session, Rep. Stanley Zeigler (D-Montville) introduced a bill to reduce food waste that passed the Maine House of Representatives and Senate, but died due to a lack of funding.

Maine is the only New England state without such a law on the books that would stop large institutions and restaurants from sending excess food straight to the landfills.

Lee also said mandatory reporting requirements for large food waste generators could be helpful for better tracking this data going forward.

But even without action from leadership, Lee said Mainers can start working on this problem at home by making sure they don’t buy more food than they can utilize. If someone does have too much food, they can refrigerate it or take other steps to keep it edible to feed other people or even animals.

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by AnnMarie Hilton, Maine Morning Star October 15, 2024

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AnnMarie Hilton grew up in a suburb of Chicago and studied journalism at Northwestern University. Before coming to Maine, she covered education for newspapers in Wisconsin and Indiana.

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