News from the Reusable Packaging Project

Maine CDC Allows Reusable Packaging in Maine Restaurants

Bangor Daily News Op-Ed on Reusable Packaging

Bangor Daily News on Maine CDC policy change

Reports and Publications

Maine CDC Health Inspection Program Policy Update

Early on in this Reusable Packaging Project, the Materials Management Team sought to involve the Maine Center for Disease Control (CDC) and Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) so as to ensure that all solutions would be in accordance with public health and safety laws. As part of this partnership, the Maine CDC and DHHS decided to create an internal policy that instructs the officers of the Maine Health Inspection Program (the program that performs food service health inspections) to follow the wording in the Federal Food Code with regards to reusable packaging in restaurants. To view the policy in it’s entirety, please follow this link.

Reusable Packaging Review of Literature

Conducted during the summer of 2021, this review of literature serves as an initial review of reusable packaging and the factors the influence the success of reuse programs. The findings were complied into an informal report, which can be viewed by following this link.

Reusable Packaging Workshop

On 9/13/2021, the Materials Management team held a stakeholder workshop to present the findings from an initial review of literature and reusable packaging case studies and to discuss the applicability of reuse systems in Maine. The meeting was composed of Maine restaurant owners, municipal leaders, and waste managers. To learn more, please read the Workshop Report.

Industry Survey Report

In Spring 2022, the reusables project leads released an industry level survey to Maine restaurants. The survey presented the four models identified by this project and asked participants for their views of those models and of reusable packaging more generally. To view the results, you can read the survey report here.

Reusable Packaging News from Maine

Reusable Packaging in National and International News