Post Office Park in downtown Portland played host to a sustainability fair on Wednesday, helping the Portland Office of Sustainability share ways in which citizens can be more sustainable.

the Portland Office of Sustainability was on hand to share materials about the city’s pesticide use ordinance, which many residents don’t know about.  The City also showcased their community food scrap recycling drop-off program, which currently has 8 locations across the city.  The program is designed to reduce food waste as well as provide local farms with materials for composting.  According to the environmental protection agency, Americans wasted almost 43 million tons of food in 2018.  The City says that recycling your food scraps helps to reduce the amount of food being incinerated and recover organic materials.

The City also invited EcoMaine, ReVision Energy, and the Portland Public Library to the event to showcase their sustainability efforts.

Aaron Rosenblum, the Health and Science Librarian at the Portland Public Library, was also on hand to discuss their efforts for sustainability.  “We have a few different ways that we interact with sustainability, for one thing, the classic thing is, if a book circulates 20 or 50 or 100 times, that’s 19 or 49 or 99 times that somebody didn’t have to buy that book, so we buy it once, and it’s circulating and circulating, and that’s more sustainable, it’s less paper and less trees, so that’s sustainable without even thinking about it.”

Rosenblum also highlighted the library’s sustainability series that runs September-June.  Additionally, the library has kilowatt meters that folks can check out and plug in throughout their homes that can give a better idea about how much electricity certain household items use.  Finally, the library runs partially on solar energy from solar panels that they have on their roof.  “Not many people know we have them.” Rosenblum remarked.

More information on the Portland Office of Sustainability can be found here 

More information about the Portland Public Library’s Sustainability Series can be found here