Baltimore Sustainability Commission

Institute for Local Self-Reliance​, ​community and grassroot organizations and various city agencies (i.e. public works, public health, business development and city school)

This strategy was first conceptualized in the Baltimore City Planning’s Office of Sustainability (BOS) Waste To Wealth Iniative and subsequent Waste to Wealth Report (2014), which recommended creating a city-wide food waste management strategy. Following this recommendation, from 2016-2018 BOS partnered with the Institute of Local Self-Reliance and over 75 stakeholders (divided into four working groups: (1) Food Waste Reduction & Recovery; (2) Compositing at Home & In The Community; (3) Food Waste Management in K-12 Schools; and (4) Creating Scalable Composting Infrastructure) across a range of sectors to produce initial recommendations for a food waste strategy. The Baltimore Food Waste and Recovery Strategy contains rationale for food recovery, local case studies of academic institutions, community-based organizations, and farms participating in food waste reduction and recovery programs, defines potential solutions, and sets ten major goals. These goals are classified by the aforementioned working group categories, and include reducing/eliminating food waste in higher education institutions, government agencies, K-12 schools, and residences, and creating composting/and or anaerobic digestion facilities in the Baltimore Region capable of processing all of Baltimore City’s organic waste. Each goal contains short-term strategies (1-5 years), mid-term strategies (5-10 years), and long-term strategies (10-20 years).