Data shows that about 40% of food produced goes uneaten, making it the single largest category of Maine’s waste stream.
That’s why Courtney Baker, currently a master's student in spatial informatics at the University of Maine, was inspired to create a user-friendly map of Maine’s circulatory food system that can help understand and leverage patterns in conjunction with the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions. This mapping has the power to reduce carbon emissions and put food back into the community where it can still benefit those in need-- instead of sending it to a landfill.
“We should feed people first, animals second, and then soil—in that order, whenever possible,” she said.
Initiated as a collaborative class project in partnership with the Mitchell Center for Sustainability to use GIS data with real-world applications, she and her colleagues collected data points to explore ways to compile a centralized place that maps food loss.
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