Reducing Food Waste

An astounding 40% of the food produced in the United States is wasted. Households are the single largest contributor to wasted food and are responsible for 37% of the problem.

Maine Food Recovery Hierarchy Policy

The Natural Resources Council of Maine helped Maine adopt the food recovery hierarchy, which prioritizes the prevention of waste followed by feeding surplus food to people and animals, all before processing it for energy or composting. We support policies and programs that do all of those things and keep food (and all organic materials) out of our landfills.

In 2025, NRCM helped pass LD 1605, which requires Maine’s largest food waste generators to divert food waste from landfills. The new law creates a Food Waste Reduction and Recycling Program beginning in 2030, focused on increasing donations of edible food to hunger relief organizations and facilitating food waste recycling. Five other New England states have already passed similar laws.

Helping Schools and Communities Reduce Food Waste

NRCM’s Sustainability Grant program provides seed funding for schools, organized nonprofit committees, municipalities, and community libraries to help them reach their sustainability goals. Many organizations and institutions have used grants to implement food waste initiatives. 

The grants encourage communities to adopt innovative, practical, and effective measures to reduce waste. This grant program helps schools, municipalities, and other nonprofit entities share the tools, knowledge, and skills to prevent waste at the source, and divert valuable resources from the landfill.

Six Ways Mainers Can Prevent Wasted Food at Home

Here are six simple steps you can take to prevent food waste at home. Visit our toolkit to learn more, or get in touch with our Sustainable Maine team! 

1. Do a little meal planning. You can save money and food by planning your meals a week in advance. Start by assessing what you already have and identify recipes you know you’ll make in the week ahead. When you’re ready to go shopping, buy only what your recipes need. You’ll probably find that you save money too. If you need help, try using a meal planning tool. 

Pro-tip: We often toss out completely edible parts of the produce we buy. Slowly add recipes to your routine that use up these edible food scraps. Making soup stock is a classic example of how to utilize food scraps.

2. Know the truth about date labels. Most dates printed on foods have nothing to do with food safety. These dates are loosely related to quality and are meant to help move product off the shelves and keep profits flowing. The best way to determine whether a food item is safe is to use your eyes and nose. If it doesn’t look or smell funny, it’s probably safe to eat.  

3. Save the imperfect produce. We have been conditioned to choose “flawless” fruits and veggies when shopping, but imperfect or “ugly” fruits and veggies taste just as good and are equally nutritious. When we skip over imperfect produce, stores throw them out and they go to waste. You can help by purchasing the uglies. Chop and purée these overlooked items and enjoy their full flavor.

4. Store food correctly. Your refrigerator has different temperature zones that you can use to your advantage to prolong the life of your foods. The coolest part of your refrigerator is the bottom shelf and the upper shelves and door are warmer. 

5. Revive foods past their prime. Everyone makes mistakes in the kitchen. The good news is that foods are forgiving! Whether your food is wilted, too salty, stale, or overcooked, try these tricks to bring it back to life: 

• Wilted: set in cold water. Ten minutes is enough, but overnight is best. 
• Too salty: dilute with water, add a little vinegar or lemon, or soak it up with a potato/rice 
• Stale: toast for a few minutes 
• Overcooked or too ripe: puree for soups, sauces, or smoothies 
• Burned: remove burned portion and save unburned part for a new recipe. 

6. Compost uneaten food into soil. Kitchen scraps are great ingredients for soil. Composting them is one of the easiest ways to make sure they stay out of the landfill or away from the incinerator. There are lots of options available to Mainers, from composting at home, to participating in a compost service, or dropping off your food scraps at a local collection site in your town; oftentimes towns partner with commercial composters or anaerobic digesters to offer this waste-reducing option to their residents. Learn more by visiting our Compost Toolkit. Once you’ve mastered reducing wasted food, share your experiences with your family, friends, and community, and let us know how it went! 

Projects could then be ranked according to the established criteria, determining their priority compared to other projects. This would ensure that projects with the greatest benefit to Maine’s people, economy, and environment are funded first, and that politics is removed from funding decisions.

Food Insecurity and Wasted Food

Thirty-five million Americans—including 166,910 Mainers and 44,520 children—experienced food insecurity in 2019. We must work to make sure that perfectly good food is not wasted, and that any surplus food is feeding people and animals instead of our landfills or incinerators.  

This vision can be achieved by aligning transportation planning with Maine’s climate goals and shifting project selection criteria to prioritize people’s needs over moving cars and trucks quickly. By reorienting planning and investment toward projects that reduce vehicle miles traveled, such as transit and active transportation, Maine can save money, revitalize local economies, and progress toward established climate goals.

Food Waste and Climate Pollution

When uneaten food ends up in landfills, it decomposes and releases methane—a gas with 28-36% more heat-trapping capability than carbon dioxide.

If every Maine household cut their wasted food in half, it would be the greenhouse gas reduction equivalent of taking 119,000 cars off the road every year. According to Project Drawdown, as of October 2021, reducing food waste is the top strategy to limit the global release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.  

Each year, the resources attributed to U.S. food loss and waste are equivalent to:

• 64 billion kWh of energy—enough to power more than 50 million U.S. homes for a year; and
• 170 million MTCO₂e greenhouse gas emissions (excluding landfill emissions) – equal to the annual CO₂ emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants.