UMaine Report: Eco-Friendly Food Packaging Costs Bar Harbor Restaurants More Than It Saves
Dec 14, 2025
BAR HARBOR—A new University of Maine report found that Bar Harbor restaurants using compostable and recyclable food packaging face rising costs, supply chain challenges, and limited local disposal options, often ending with the environmentally friendly containers to be landfilled or incinerated instead of recycled or composted after patrons use them.
The University of Maine study shows that local restaurants using compostable and recyclable packaging are encountering “significant barriers and frustrations” disposing of the packaging and getting it.
“Increasing costs, supply chain issues, and material efficacy burden local food service providers,” the report writes. “And, while we commend municipal policies aimed towards the reduction of single-use products, it is clear that these same policies also further burden food service providers.”
To make it more frustrating for restaurants, bakeries, coffee shops, and ice cream parlors that want eco-friendly packaging for their food, towns don’t have the facilities to compost or recycle that sort of packaging.
”Without plans and programs in place, municipalities are not equipped to recycle or compost disposables. Nor do compostables and recyclables address the root problem of disposability. These alternatives obfuscate products’ end-of-life impacts from consumers, perpetuating the single-use cultural norm. The expenditures reported in the survey indicate restaurants could increase profits by switching to reusables,” the report states.
That could mean a number of things, but one of the programs occurring in the Boston area is Recirclable, where people ordering take-out also get a reusable glass bowl that they must pay for if they do not return within 14 days.
According to Upstream, “Nearly 1 trillion disposable food service products are used each year in the United States.”
Upstream also states that in the country, “Roughly 20 billion pieces of litter are from disposable food-service packaging.”
The end goal of the University of Maine researchers it to find ways to reduce marine debris at its source.
One of the first steps to doing that, they say, is looking at disposable food packaging use and see if coastal Maine communities can have reusable food packaging systems. That, they say, would decrease the harm done to the coastal ecosystem by reducing trash that can introduce more forever chemicals (PFAS) or other toxins into the environment.
And Bar Harbor, with its seasonal fluctuations for restaurants, was one of the places the researchers, supported by Reuse Me, studied.
Reuse Me is a volunteer coalition meant “to build a robust, integrated, and convenient reuse ecosystem in Maine.”
“The survey is an important tool to better understand the potential benefits of packaging alternatives. Before we started, we already understood that nobody likes waste or spending money on packaging that is often only used for a few minutes before it becomes trash. But it was important to get a stronger estimate of how costly disposable packaging is—to businesses, to the community, to the tax base, and of course to the natural environment that so many come from around the world to see,” said Dr. Cindy Isenhour, professor, Department of Anthropology & Climate Change Institute, University of Maine.
According to the baseline report, the tourism season “generates staggering waste” with 25 survey participants in Bar Harbor reporting that they collectively used 41,459 disposables during the month in the high season. An average month those businesses used 30,379.
“To address the challenge of marine debris, the United States Congress recognized marine debris as an urgent national priority,” the report writes.
This occurred in 2006, with federal programs authorized to reduce the adverse effects of garbage in the ocean.
Next steps are finalizing the pilot project designs and beginning the pilot programs that would focus on reusing food packaging.
Bar Harbor was one of three towns picked to explore the potential of reusable food packaging systems. Each community will have at least three or four food service providers participate. That means they’ll offer customers the option of taking their food in packaging that is both reusable and returnable.
With a population of approximately 5,300 year round residents, Bar Harbor supports Acadia National Park, which lately has had multiple years where there have been approximately 4 million visits. This causes a seasonal fluctuation of use.
“Most food businesses make the bulk of their sales in the summer and close for the winter months,” the report writes.
The town bans single-use plastic containers. This means that most of the restaurants and businesses use compostable clamshell containers and clear beverage containers.
Surveys sent to those food businesses asked about operation costs, waste management and generation. Approximately 21% of those responding (25 out of 117) said that they spent on average $2,039 a month on disposable food packaging.
”Disposable food packaging presents a significant burden to food service providers; interview data and informal conversations with owners and managers shows that increasing costs of disposable units hurt restaurants profits,” the survey states.
It’s more than that though. It also takes 395 work hours to manage that packaging. That’s because the packaging must be ordered, inventoried, assembled, and stored. Hours spent doing that are hours that employees can’t do other needs.
“Restaurants highly value cost efficiency; when asked about their primary packaging decision-making priorities, Bar Harbor respondents prioritized finances and profit and health and safety over environmental responsibility, convenience and operational feasibility, or customer perceptions and satisfaction,” the report says. “In addition to food packaging costs, waste management access and expenditures affect restaurant profit margins. Collectively, respondents spent $5,880 on waste management services–an average of $420 dollars per month managing waste.”
“Bar Harbor is an interesting case because businesses spend a lot of money on packaging— because it is supposed to be better for the environment. Unfortunately, without access to high-heat commercial composting that can break those packages down, most of the containers end up in the waste stream to be incinerated or landfilled, ultimately reducing their environmental benefits. Reusable packaging requires an initial investment, sure, but the returns can come quickly because businesses no longer have to buy disposables and taxpayers no longer have to pay to dispose of them,” Dr. Isenhour said.
The study showed:
- “Informal interview data shows that businesses rationalize that the use of compostables mitigates the high rate of waste generation.
- “However, these containers require industrial composting facilities to break down. Limited access to proper facilities reduces compostables’ efficacy in waste reduction.
- “The overwhelming majority of compostables end up landfilled or incinerated, just like plastic waste.”
Despite its high visitation counts, Bar Harbor establishments in the study generated the least amount of waste per month than Bath and South Portland, the other municipalities in the study.
“Bar Harbor is also an interesting case because of its strong, nature-based tourist economy. Many businesses cater to tourists who want to take out ice cream, a coffee, or a quick sandwich. All that take-out generates a significant amount of waste that all too often spills out of trash cans, into the storm drains, and unfortunately sometimes into the ocean,” Dr. Isenhour said. “Because people come to Bar Harbor for the natural beauty, it seems like the type of place that could support a strong reuse economy, where visitors could check out a travel coffee mug at breakfast and return later that evening when they borrow an ice cream cup!”
The Reuse ME project partnered with the Town of Bar Harbor, the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce, and Zero Waste MDI.
“We’d like to extend our thanks to Hailey Bondy, staff planner for the Town of Bar Harbor; Michele Gagnon, planning director for the Town of Bar Harbor; Everal Eaton, executive director at the Bar Harbor Chamber of Commerce; Elizabeth Chen, Friends of Acadia—without whom none of this project would be possible,” the report states.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Recirclable, an example of a reusable take-out container program.
Upstream report.
The Source details another program in use.
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