Recapturing Food at the Market

—writer Stephanie Shapiro has been a Market regular for nearly 40 years. She lives in Tuxedo Park with husband Tom and dog Archie.

On a raw, rainy market morning in January, Kaylah Abrams keeps count as a steady stream of patrons dump buckets of food scraps into large plastic bins sitting on a trailer. By noon, when the market closes, Kaylah will have tallied more than 100 contributors who bring buckets of eggshells, banana peels, stale bagels, and coffee grounds, weighing as much as 600 to 700 pounds.

That’s 600 to 700 fewer pounds of food waste that would otherwise get dumped in landfills, contributing to an estimated 58 percent of the greenhouse gases that are released to the atmosphere, according to an EPA report. 

The food recapture program is a win for the environment and for the pigs at Pahl’s Farm, who feast on the scraps collected weekly at the market.

—Kaylah Abrams, Myles Rome, and D'Andre Hawkins are DPW food waste associates

Kaylah and colleagues D’Andre Hawkins and Myles Rome work out of Baltimore City’s Office of Sustainability as food waste associates. Kaylah and D’Andre are members of the Maryland Climate Corps, an initiative coordinated by the Chesapeake Bay Trust and the Maryland Department of Service and Civic Innovation.

“We’re responsible for keeping track of how many people are coming, tracking contaminants [paper, meat, plastic bags, coffee filters, produce stickers, etc.], and we’re also responsible for removing them,” Kaylah says.

Kaylah uses the drop-off site as a public bulletin board to boost engagement in other environmentally-sound practices. “It’s my intention to make it a place where people can comfortably drop off their food scraps but also take advantage of resources and events such as a recent microgreens workshop that revolve around food, climate, and sustainability,” Kaylah says.

Kaylah and D’Andre are also working on a plan to expand awareness of the importance of food reclamation across the city “on a large scale,” D’Andre says.

For Kaylah, a Baltimore City College graduate, the hands-on assignment is “a great opportunity to immediately get into and explore different career options” before enrolling in college. Since she began in September, Kaylah has gained a better understanding of climate change and how to fight it. Her job also gives her an inside view of how city government works. Through the Climate Corps, she meets with a mentor twice a month who has helped her gain self confidence and prepare for a career in the green workforce.

“One thing I really appreciate is some of the the professional development I’ve been able to obtain,” Kaylah says. Thanks to monthly training sessions, her public speaking skills have also improved.

Recycling food scraps at the market has been restorative for Kaylah. “It’s very calming,” she says. “The 32nd Street Market has given me a lot of access to fresh food.”  

Kaylah and her cohorts also collected food scraps at the downtown Baltimore Farmers Market last year. The City’s Department of Public Works maintains a very informative website and manages five other drop-off locations in residential areas. Additionally, DPW has sponsored a pilot program through May 25 that features drop-off sites at five local colleges and universities.

—Stephanie Shapiro