Susanne Lee will lead an online presentation via Teams called, It’s All Food – Rethinking Wasted Food in Maine, Tuesday, March 31, at 12 p.m., hosted by Merryspring Nature Center.

"In Maine, we throw away approximately 361,000 tons of food annually* – the majority of which is perfectly good, edible food!" said a Merryspring news release. "But even the parts that are considered 'inedible' for people or animals - scraps, peels, trims, and even rotten, moldy food – still have valuable nutrients and energy that should not be thrown away. It’s all food and can be composted and 'fed' to the soil or even used directly to grow new food. The Maine DEP's Food Recovery Hierarchy supports this important priority."

New Maine legislation (LD1065) passed in 2025 establishes that beginning in 2030 the state’s largest wasted food generators will no longer be allowed to put food in the trash.  Maine’s Climate Action Plan update in 2024 also directs that wasted food should be reduced 50% by 2030. Susanne Lee, Faculty Fellow at UMaine’s Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions will discuss ways to ensure that even seemingly inedible food is always put to its best and highest use – and never wasted. 

Lee came to UMaine after a thirty-year career in consumer products. In her role as Executive in Residence at the Maine Business School, she focused on bringing the "real-world" into MBS classes and projects. She identified a strong student and personal interest in sustainable business management, highlighting companies whose "triple bottom line" strategy delivers benefits for "people, profits, and the planet."  

She began working with the Mitchell Center in Fall 2019 as part of the Mitchell Center’s Materials Management team. Within that transdisciplinary group, Lee leads a student/faculty team working directly with state, business, and community stakeholders as well as national and global food waste experts like ReFED and Harvard Food Law & Policy to develop solutions to end wasted food in Maine.  Each year, the students implement a number of stakeholder-driven pilots to help Maine communities and organizations to build a sustainable, waste-free, circular food system.  

This talk is part of Merryspring’s Online Winter Talk series, generously sponsored by Camden Riverhouse Hotel.  

If you prefer to watch as Merryspring broadcasts live on the big screen in the conference room at Merryspring Nature Center, at 30 Conway Road in Camden, please plan to arrive before 12 p.m. to avoid noise interference during recording. 

Thanks to the generosity of the Cascade Foundation, the talks will also be recorded for future viewing on the Merryspring YouTube channel.  

Please join Merryspring each week at noon from January through April for its Winter & Spring Tuesday Talk series. The link to our online talks can also be found on the website homepage and in each event on the calendar or you may request the link by sending an email to info@merryspring.org.   

Merryspring is your community nature center offering walking trails, cultivated gardens, wildlife, and ecology and horticulture educational programs all year round. The park is located at the end of Conway Road, just off of Route 1 in Camden behind Hannaford Shopping Plaza. For more information on this program, please contact info@merryspring.org or call 207-236-2239.