Portland Progress

Mandate recycling for commercial and multifamily buildings.

Status: Not Started

Update:  Ecomaine launched a program to expand recycling opportunities and reduce barriers for residents of apartments, condos, and other multi-family properties to participate (2025). Supporting ecomaine’s efforts and collaborating to improve education and enforcement of existing multi-family recycling programs.

Key Milestones: Require recycling in commercial and multifamily residential buildings by 2026.

Expand programs to divert food waste and increase organics recycling rates to ensure that excess food is better used to nourish people, animals, industries, and soils.

Status: In Progress

Update: Launched City’s first public food waste recycling program, a pilot drop-off program with 5 collection sites (2021). Increased program use allowed for the addition of 5 more drop-off sites; the Community Composting Program now has ten locations. 2022 ME-DEP Waste Reduction Grant allowed for expanded outreach, translation of compost site signs and educational materials into six languages other than English, installation of multilingual signs at drop-off sites, informational door hangers distributed in low-participating areas, year-long newspaper advertisements in the West End News and Amjambo Africa, and other initiatives to improve accessibility to and awareness of the program.

We received a 2025 ME-DEP Waste Reduction Grant to improve the existing facilities by installing eight wooden A-frame kiosks to make the composting drop sites more visible to residents, safer and more accessible for Garbage to Garden haulers to access and pick up the compost, and easier for city staff to maintain the sites, especially during the winter. The kiosks will also allow for a community board, which will host permanent composting educational materials as well as relevant local community events. We will also be adding one new composting drop-off site and hosting several community events at community gardens adjacent to the newly improved compost sites.

Key Milestones: Reduce food waste in trash stream 70% by 2040.

Ban select single-use plastics and identify partnerships to reduce plastic waste.

Status: In Progress

Update: Rolled out Phase II of the Straw Ban in April 2021 and created a retailer FAQ page with best practices (2021). Working with retailers to reduce single-use plastics.

Key Milestones: Eliminate single-use plastics in the cities to the fullest extent practicable by 2026.

Foster a circular and sharing economy.

Status: In Progress

Update:  April 2023 Coffee & Climate conversation focused on the establishment of sharing economies.  Co-hosted Ripe for Repair meetups, supporting community-led monthly repair cafes. Awarded 2 Sustainable Neighborhood Mini Grants to support a sharing economy for 3 clothing repair fairs and a bicycle repair & maintenance workshop. November 2025 Coffee & Climate was led by Goodwill Northern New England discussing the lifecycle of donated goods and community impact.

Key Milestones: Ongoing efforts to establish new spaces, programs, or initiatives in each city that support resource sharing, reuse, or repair

Work with state and regional partners to encourage “by-product synergy” with industrial waste streams.

Status: Not Started

Update: Long-term Strategy

Key Milestone: Regional materials marketplace launched by 2035

Investigate options for reducing emissions of wastewater treatment with anaerobic digestion.

Status: Not Started

Update: Long-term Strategy

Key Milestone: Engineering feasibility study commissioned by 2032

Adopt a sustainable purchasing policy for municipal procurement.

Status: Not started

Update: None

Key Milestone: Sustainable purchasing policy adopted by 2024