I was one of the countless Mainers facing food insecurity, feeling guilty for the hunger in my stomach because I knew my cabinets were running bare and I couldn’t afford to replenish them without asking for help.Ěý

Food. Full bellies. Balanced, healthy meals to nourish your body and mind. Midnight snacks. Food is something many of us take for granted.

When I was growing up, I never worried that I wouldn’t have food to eat. That concern never crossed my mind until recently. When I was growing up, I understood that money was tight, but I always knew I’d have food to eat. This is not the case for everyone. Roughly in the world live in hunger, including and . This means that 1 in 10 people in Maine experience food insecurity. Food insecurity is defined by as “a lack of consistent access to enough food for every person in a household to live an active, healthy life.” As a student researcher at the 91±¬ÁĎ, I learned that have experienced food insecurity. We all know someone who is impacted by food insecurity, and we’re all likely to experience it at some point in our lives.Ěý

Food Insecurity: A Social Issue

The public health crisis of food insecurity is more than just an issue of empty stomachs. Food insecurity disproportionately affects poor and marginalized communities. It is created and perpetuated by political, socioeconomic, and environmental factors such as insufficient wages and worker protections, flawed health systems and food systems, pollution and climate change, discrimination, inequality, and conflict. Perhaps one of the most startling things to comprehend is that while so many people are going hungry, vast amounts of perfectly good food are being dumped into landfills every single day.

According to Food Rescue MAINE, 40% of food in the U.S. is wasted each year, which amounts to 133 billion pounds of food. This is enough to fill Gillette Stadium more than 700 times. This wasted food is worth more than $160 billion and could feed a significant portion of hungry people, yet 97% of this food waste still ends up in landfills. Now imagine for a moment how it feels to be food insecure while knowing that this much food is wasted.Ěý

My Personal Experience with Food Insecurity

During the summer of 2022, I didn’t have to imagine. I was one of the countless Mainers facing food insecurity, and I felt guilty for the hunger in my stomach because I knew my cabinets were running bare and I couldn’t afford to replenish them without help. Imagine eating popcorn for dinner several nights in a row because you can’t afford nutritious food, and it’s the only thing left in your cabinet. Imagine doing this while knowing that millions of pounds of perfectly good food, food that you would have been overjoyed to eat, was now in a landfill. Most of the food we waste in the US never even makes it to people’s plates. This food could feed people. Wasted food food while people go hungry is a social justice issue, and it needs to be addressed as such.Ěý

Food Waste: An Environmental Issue

In addition to being a social justice issue, food waste is also an environmental issue. Those millions of pounds of food going into landfills each year don’t just sit there. They emit immense amounts of greenhouse gases and contribute to the climate crisis. lists food waste as the third most pressing issue that needs to be addressed to mitigate the climate crisis, and it is often stated that ending food waste would be more effective climate solution than ending all carbon emissions from planes. The climate crisis is leading to mass extinction, ecosystem collapse, and accentuating the food insecurity crisis by crippling agricultural industries. The climate crisis, which also disproportionately affects poor and marginalized communities, is putting all of our collective futures at risk, and food waste is contributing significantly to this risk. Wasting food is not only a food justice issue but also a climate justice issue.Ěý

Finding Solutions

To combat these food justice and climate justice issues, we must close the gaps in the food cycle and follow the hierarchy of food waste solutions. The food recovery hierarchy ensures that as much food as possible is feeds people and animals, pr is used for energy production and composted- instead of being brought to the landfill. That’s why I decided to work with the George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions as a food waste intern. In this program, we focus on the following six food waste solutions:

1. Track wasted food
2. Rescue wasted food
3. Educate people about food waste
4. Reduce food surplus
5. Encourage food donation
6. Divert food waste from landfills.

Food waste and food insecurity are daunting, extensive issues that may seem impossible to solve, but through individual, community, and large-scale efforts, a better future is possible.

Ěý

And always remember… Maine food is too good to waste.

– Tamra B, Mitchell Center Student Intern

I am a coffee-lover and music enthusiast who loves to be outside, especially for hiking and skiing. In my free time, you can find me reading or playing the piano.

The post Food Waste is a Social Justice Issue appeared first on Food Rescue MAINE.

Personally, I love to workout- but every year around this time, the local gyms become a bit crowded with New Year’s resolution newcomers. These newbies stick around for a couple of weeks, but usually stop working out by February. Don’t get me wrong- the idea behind New Year’s resolutions is great- I want to be a better me, too.Ěý However, these “me-centered” diets, exercise goals, and dry January pledges seem destined for early failure. So what can we do to break the cycle?

Instead of encouraging anyone to make self-focused lifestyle changes, I think that this Covid-filled January is a great time to think about the greater good.Ěý And what can benefit others more than saving a precious resource that everyone needs- FOOD! That being said, just last week, Food Rescue MAINE debuted our Household Food Waste Tracker on our website. This month, I want to encourage YOU to try out this brand new, FREE, food waste tracker, and discover how much food your household wastes. With the Household Food Waste Tracker,Ěý you can be more mindful of your food: save money, shop less, eat better, help feed your community, and protect Maine’s environment – air, water, and soil…ALL AT THE SAME TIME! The best part- all it takes is slightly tweaking the daily habits that you already have to bring more awareness to the way you handle food. Here’s how it works:

How Does it Work?

The Household Food Waste Tracker is a timely way to get our audience(YOU) to start tracking their food waste.Ěý Using the tracker itselfĚý is simple– the first week, you will go about each day as usual, but instead of throwing your food waste away, set it aside in a container. At the end of the week, you will measure your household food waste, mark down how many pounds you wasted on your Household Food Waste Tracker table, and add a note about what or why your food is getting wasted . Click here to access Food Rescue MAINE’s Free Household Food Waste Tracker. This will help you to create a baseline for how much food you waste in a typical week and some reasons why.

The next step of using the Household Food Waste Tracker is designed to show you how much a small change in your daily habits can change the amount of food that you waste. Each week, pick and implement one item from the bank of food waste reduction tips in the tracker and then measure your food waste as usual. At the end of the week, mark down how much food you wasted, and compare with your week 1 findings. Every week of the challenge, pick a new food waste reduction tip to try, and see which practices work for you! Feel free to carry over the old food waste tips from each week, or start fresh with each new standalone challenge.Ěý

This challenge is one that you can easily customize- feel free to do it for only three weeks, or the full three months. Research says…stick it out for 4 weeks.Ěý Once you get started and see how easy it is to make progress and the instant benefits – you won’t want to stop!Ěý

Amp Up Your Effort

Now that you are learning about how much food you are wasting, It can be discouraging to just dump all that food waste back in the trash can. Do you want to know what to do with the containers of food waste that you just saved from the trash? Now that you know how much food your household is wasting, the next step is to make sure that food waste stays out of landfills. There are three basic steps to preventing food from being taken to a landfill:Ěý

1. Reduce- prevent food from going to waste before the food waste happens(i.e. Shop smarter, freeze food, meal prep, etc..)
2. Recover- if the food is still good and edible for people, share with friends/family or donate to your local pantry.
3. Recycle– If the food is no longer edible, it is still good for the earth if you compost; so make sure to do , hire a composting service that will pick-up food scraps at home, or use a community drop-off site for food recycling. Compost or recycle your food scraps instead of throwing them away.Ěý

The Household Food Waste Tracker focuses on preventing food waste with Reduction and Recovery techniques. Unfortunately, no matter how hard we try, there will always be some food scraps to throw away. Instead of tossing the food waste you measure directly in the trash, Recycle it by composting at home, using a curbside composting facility, or dropping your food off at your local transfer station. Click here to find out where you can bring food waste for recycling or donation in your area.

Share Your Journey

Now that you have taken on this fun and challenging project, help us to share your journey! to let us know what challenges reduced your food waste the most, and which challenges you would toss. Tag in a photo of your favorite challenge. In 2022, use these helpful habits to continue reducing your food waste.

And always remember- Maine food is too good to waste.

-Hannah M., Mitchell Center Student Intern

I’m a novel-reading, chocolate connoisseur who enjoys *short but sweet* hikes, and trying new plant-based recipes.

The post Save Money, Eat Better, and Protect Maine with the FRM Household Food Waste Tracker appeared first on Food Rescue MAINE.

With the holiday season upon us, holiday foods are a key part of many family celebrations. After seeing how many of these holiday foods end up as leftovers at my house, I wanted to share some tips and recipes to ensure that your holiday favorites do not end up as food waste. Luckily, preventing food waste in your kitchen is as easy as planning ahead, being mindful of your leftovers, and sharing what you can’t eat yourself.Ěý

Tip 1: Plan To Reduce Waste

The first(and easiest) step to making sure your hard work and delicious holiday cooking does not go to waste is to properly plan for how many guests you will have. If you are anything like me, portioning correctly can be a serious problem. Planning ahead and only cooking for the guests you know you will have will reduce food waste before it even happens. Regardless of how hard we try though, there will often be a little leftover food from our holiday dinners.Ěý

Tip 2: Be Mindful of your Leftovers

The next step in the planning process is to think about what you can do with any leftover food that may occur. To help you get started, we compiled a list of common leftover holiday foods– from none other than our own followers! Our social media intern, Kalina, asked, “What foods do you most often have left over after the holidays?” Let’s see what you said and how we can help!

1. Ham

Ham is typically the protein that my family cooks for Christmas. Every year, there is so much leftover ham that we would have to eat it for days to use it all up.Ěý To avoid this leftover fatigue, we always . One other fan-favorite leftover ham dish is ham and cheese sliders- while this is typically done with deli ham, thinly sliced fresh ham would be a delicious substitute. These sliders are an excellent way to feed holiday house guests after your traditional ham feast.

2. Turkey

Turkey is another popular protein that our Maine audience cooks for the holiday, and it is so versatile! One of my personal favorite dishes is a chicken or a turkey pot pie. Pies and soups are excellent choices for using up your leftovers, because you can add many other leftovers – cooked veggies, onions, potatoes, salad greens – and they will still be good! Try Ěý

3. Mashed potatoes

Mashed potatoes are terrific as part of the holiday meal, but maybe even better as leftovers.Ěý Repurposing mashed potatoes can be so easy! Try forming handfuls of mashed potatoes into pancake shapes and frying them up in the bacon pan for a special breakfast treat!. A simple shepherd’s pie is another great way to use up leftover mashed potatoes. Shepherd’s pie is a quick, one pan recipe with a very short ingredient list, and delicious flavors. Feel free to add any leftover veggies that you have, like peas, carrots, corn – a tasty way to clean up the fridge! If you find yourself entertaining a lot of people for the holidays, you may also want to try these(they may be a great appetizer to go along with your ham and cheese sliders).Ěý

4. Canned Pumpkin Puree

While I love pumpkin, every time I have that canned pumpkin puree leftover from my pumpkin baked goods, it molds before I get to use it. However, with pumpkin being such a popular seasonal flavor, wasting it is easily avoidable. I personally love to make pumpkin pancakes, or have a tasty treat of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. It can often be difficult to come up with recipes to use up your leftover pumpkin puree, because the amount of pumpkin you have leftover could vary from a teaspoon to three-quarters of the can. .

5. Lasagna

Lasagna is a great meal to store in the freezer. Simply slice your lasagna into personal portions and store in a plastic or tempered glass tupperware in your freezer. When you are ready, just pop it in the microwave(or in the oven for a little extra crispiness).Ěý

If you are getting sick of eating the same lasagna, there is still no reason to throw it away. Like all good things, it may be even better as a soup! While lasagna soup is typically made with the ingredients that make up lasagna- before they are cooked and mixed together, there is no reason that you cannot slice and deconstruct an already made lasagna, and make it into this yummy soup.

6. Bread

BREAD. Everybody loves bread, and there is a reason for that- there are so many uses for it! If the bread or rolls that you got for the holidays are starting to get stale, that means it is time to get creative and turn them into something delicious. , , andare just a few of the many things that you can make with your leftover holiday bread.Ěý

Sometimes food waste is unavoidable, and we end up with more leftovers than we can manage. When this happens, get creative and make fun new things out of your leftovers. Try some of the recipes mentioned above, and even freeze whatever you have space to store.Ěý

Tip 3: Share With Others

If you still have food left over, remember that the holiday season is an excellent time to share with others. Check with your neighbors, friends and family, local college students, senior center, and even your local food bank or food donation site to see what types of food they accept.

And always remember- Maine food is too good to waste.

-Hannah M., Mitchell Center Student Intern

I’m a novel-reading, chocolate connoisseur who enjoys *short but sweet* hikes, and trying new plant-based recipes.

The post STOP Wasting Holiday Food: Make your Leftovers Work for You appeared first on Food Rescue MAINE.

As a resident of Winslow, my town’s free food recycling bins are located at 136 Halifax St. in Winslow, and I participate in one of the Mitchell Center’s town food recycling pilots! I’m here to show you how easy it is to recycle your food by walking you through my own food recycling routine.Ěý

Step 1: Pick Your Compost Bins

First, I set aside two 5-gallon buckets (with lids) to collect my food scraps in. For my household of four, we fill and empty these buckets every 4-5 days. You can also keep more than two buckets for food scraps to minimize trips to the transfer station. Since I keep my compost bins in the garage, I use lidded buckets to keep any odors in and unwelcome visitors out.

Pro tip: You can also freeze your food scraps to minimize trips to the food recycling site – this makes Maine winter time food recycling even easier to do!.Ěý

Step 2: Collect Your Food Waste

Keep a bowl on your countertop to put food scraps in while you’re cooking. While I made myself a salad for lunch today, I put my scraps into a small kitchen bowl. Once I finished cooking and collected all of my food scraps, I emptied the small bowl into my 5-gallon bucket in the garage. This is the process that works for my household, but you could certainly keep your collection bucket on your kitchen countertop for a more direct approach.Ěý

Step 3: Bring Your Food Waste to the Transfer Station

Time to bring my buckets to the food recycling site! My liner-free 5-gallon bucket is shown in the far right photo above.Ěý My house is only a 5 minute drive to the food collection site in Winslow, which is located conveniently at the Winslow Public Library parking lot. This is a very central location, and only a short drive away for residents of Winslow.Ěý Click here to find out where you can bring food waste for recycling or donation in your area.

Once I arrived, I flipped open the top of a green collection tote and emptied all of my food scraps into the tote. While a special liner is used in these green totes, liners should not be used in your food recycling process. These liners shown in the green totes are for the convenience of Agricycle and will NOT go into the food recycling process.

These totes are collected by Agricycle on Thursdays, so when I go on Wednesday it’s exciting to see how much food waste is collected and money is being saved through everyone recycling their food scraps. Our town just started and has already gone from filling two totes to three. Tell your family and friends to join us! The more we reduce and recycle our food waste, the more we save…and protect our Maine land and water.Ěý

Step 4: Clean and Repeat

Rinse the food waste buckets. When I return home I usually use the garden hose to spray out both 5-gallon buckets before returning them to the garage. You can also rinse your bucket out in the sink or with a soapy dish rag.Ěý

Common FAQs:

Now to help you start your own food recycling journey, I’ve answered some frequently asked questions below. But if you have any other questions or need help getting started, please reach out to me or another member of the Mitchell Center team.

Q: Do the food buckets get smelly between visits to the town food collection site?

A: Keeping a lid on your food waste bucket will mitigate any smell there might be. You can also choose to freeze your food scraps between visits to the town food collection site. Putting sawdust in the bottom of your buckets is an organic way to keep things fresh and easy to clean. This sawdust is also great for compost material! Do not use any paper or plastic bags to line your bin, because they cannot be put into the green food recycling bins. No plastic or chemical substances should end up in compost! Finally, be sure to rinse your bucket thoroughly with water after emptying it at the town food collection site.

Q: What can I put in the green food recycling bins?

A: Anything that’s food! A sign is posted at the town food recycling site to indicate what can go in the bins. As a general rule, if it’s food, it can go in the bin, and if it’s not, then it cannot go in the bin. For example, you can put your Halloween pumpkins, fruit and vegetable scraps, flowers, and all of your meats/bones in the bins. You cannot put plastic bags, to-go food containers, bottles, napkins, or straws in the bins- even if they are biodegradable!

Q: Why can’t compostable ware go into the food recycling bin?

A: Many pieces of compostable ware cannot be composted due to harmful microplastics. These microplastics affect soil health and cause harmful effects when we grow our food in that contaminated soil.

Q: What if my community does not have a free drop-off site?

A: Try at-home composting!Ěý ĚýSuggest to your town to set up a drop-off site and contact the Mitchell Center for help in doing so. It’s a great way to help the environment AND help your town save money!

Q: Is this a messy process?

A: It doesn’t have to be! Keeping a lid on your bucket helps immensely with this and making sure to wash your bucket between visits. If you don’t want to wash your bucket between visits, you can also line your bucket with a trash bag. Remember, trash bags cannot be put into the green food recycling totes at the town food recycling site. Only food belongs in the green totes!

If you have unexpired and uneaten food that can be donated, Now that you know how easy it is, I hope to see you all at the Mitchell Center Town Food Recycling Sites soon!Ěý

And always remember- Maine food is too good to waste.

—- Hannah Crayton, Senior at Thomas College majoring in Environmental Science and Policy and Student Intern for Food Waste Projects.

craytonh@thomas.eduĚýĚý

The post Food Recycling Made Easy! appeared first on Food Rescue MAINE.

Since meal prepping is easily my favorite form of food waste prevention, I wanted to bring you inside my own kitchen to demonstrate how it’s done! But what is meal prepping and why is it so effective? Meal prepping is simply cooking your favorite weekly meals but with a plan – for shopping, cooking, and eating. You plan your shopping list with the purpose of cooking specific meals. You cook those meals with a plan for how many people to feed, how much to eat, and for how many days. Following your plan will prevent you from having a pile of food to throw out at the end of the week. After analyzing my own process, I came up with seven simple steps to make meal prepping a breeze.Ěý

Step 1: Be Realistic About Your Lifestyle

The key to meal prepping is to figure out how much food you need. It is important to have a realistic view of your lifestyle. Start off by asking yourself the following questions:

• • How many people are in my household?
  • When do I go to the grocery store?Ěý
  • How much should I eat at each meal?
  • When do I eat out?
  • How busy is my typical week?Ěý

Your answers to all of these questions will affect your meal prepping plan. Personally, I live on my own, and as a college student, it is not realistic for me to go to the store more than once a week. That being said, every Sunday, I go to the grocery store and buy food for two big, 3-4 serving meals using recommended dietary serving sizes. Then I do all of the prep work and cooking that afternoon. I have found that six large servings(sometimes I split one serving up into two for lunch) will get me through a full week, and when I make more than that for just myself, my tendency to eat out gets in the way and I end up having to freeze a meal or two.Ěý

If you are having any problems conceptualizing how much food you will need for your household, . This software will allow you to enter the number of people and days that you are cooking for and develop a plan based on this information.Ěý

Step 2: Get Prepared

Make sure that you have everything you need to get started. In addition to food, this just means plenty of containers. I use six single-serving glass storage containers (no BPA’s for me!). Using the same-sizedĚýcontainers simply makes them easy to stack and fit in the fridge nicely. I would also recommend choosing a brand that is microwave and dishwasher safe, as this will make reheating your food and cleaning up throughout the week easier.Ěý

When you are choosing containers, use brands that are freezer safe to allow you to freeze some meals, if needed. Ěý

Step 3: “Shop” Your Fridge and Pantry First

The next step to great meal prepping (and a most crucial step in preventing food waste) is to “shop” the food that you already have in your refrigerator and pantry and incorporate that food into your meals. If you use the food already available to you, you can avoid wasting food and save money buying unnecessary duplicates. After “shopping” my own kitchen, I knew that I had potatoes, onions, and spinach that I needed to get rid of before they spoiled– but I still needed some more inspiration to figure out what I wanted to cook.

If you are having trouble coming up with meals based on the ingredients that you have,

Step 4: Select Your Recipes – Get Inspired

This is my favorite part of meal prepping (in addition to eating, of course) —Ěý figuring out what recipes to make! This week I have a visitor that is not quite as excited about my plant-based meals, so I needed some new ideas.

I got up early on Saturday morning to hit my local farmers’ market and see if I could get my hands on some fresh, seasonal produce to inspire my recipes for this week. I ended up coming away with a few things: a beautiful bunch of kale, garden-grown carrots, freshly baked seeded rye, apple cider from a local orchard, and some crepes– for some much needed brain fuel. With all of these lovely fall ingredients, I had the perfect items to incorporate into one of my favorite soups – a that has been my favorite for years now. Soups are perfect for meal prepping because they are an amazing way to use up the leftover items in your kitchen. You can almost never go wrong by adding, substituting, or taking out a few ingredients of your favorite soup. For my second meal, I decided on a simple vodka sauce rigatoni recipe- for no other reason than it was requested- and I needed to get rid of some spinach.

Step 5: Smart Grocery Shopping

After you have taken an inventory of your fridge and pantry and picked your meals, it is time to make your grocery list and go shopping. As you can see, I had little items to buy this week, because I already had many of the ingredients. Meal prepping makes you take stock of your resources and use them to their full potential. When you go into the grocery store, try to stick to only the items that you put on your list. Coupons and bulk deals can be very tempting, but I find that I usually end up spending extra money on these discounted foods, and then they go to waste anyway. This is why being realistic about your lifestyle is so important.

Step 6: Cook and Package

I choose to do all of my shopping and cooking on Sunday, because it is the beginning of a new week, and it works best for my busy school schedule. Make sureĚýyou pick a day that you have a few hours to spare. Then, simply cook the food that you planned. After you have finished cooking your meals, let your food cool. Then serve equal portions into your containers and pop them into the fridge or freezer to store. Once you areĚýcomfortable with basic meal prepping, don’t be afraid to try new recipes and to creatively use up the food in your kitchen.

Step 7: Eat and Enjoy!

The easiest and final step of the process is eating your meals! You have planned out your entire week of meals with a plan. You saved money by using what you had. The best part of meal prepping is that now you are free from cooking for the rest of the week. You just have to take out Ěýa meal and pop it in the microwave or heat it on the stove. There will be no more worrying about cooking after work, or spending money on food when there is “nothing in the house”. You have planned with purpose, and now you have some time to relax.

And always remember- Maine food is too good to waste.

-Hannah M., Mitchell Center Student Intern

I’m a novel-reading, chocolate connoisseur who enjoys *short but sweet* hikes, and trying new plant-based recipes.

Citations:

The post Try Meal Prepping To Stop Wasting Food – Save Money And Time, Too! appeared first on Food Rescue MAINE.