Prison in Maine Teaches Inmates to Recycle and Compost

An initiative at the Maine State Prison in Warren, Maine, is teaching inmates how to compost, recycle, grow vegetables and manage beehives. The program is run by Captain Ryan Fries, who is a captain at the prison, and Mark Hutchinson who teaches at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension.

The inmates generate roughly 228 tons of compostable food waste, 58 tons of recyclable paper and 47 tons of cardboard each year. The recycling program, along with the vegetables, saves taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars in trash disposal fees and food costs.

Portland Press Herald has more information:

Teaching inmates at the Maine State Prison in Warren how to garden has brought Mark Hutchinson, a University of Maine Cooperative Extension professor, some special challenges.

Sharp objects are prohibited in the prison, but how do you teach a pruning class without pruning shears? How do you teach tillage without any equipment? Hutchinson’s students at the prison dissect flowers in their botany class with their fingernails instead of knives or tweezers, and they use plastic magnifying glasses in place of metal ones.

“It can be done,” Hutchinson has learned. “It just takes a little bit of thought and creativity.”

Read the full story here.