Baltimore Convention Center

Prior to the pandemic, they placed a lot of focus on sustainable meetings. Now that operations are moving toward normalcy once again, they are hoping to return to that priority. In 2018 they began a food waste reduction study to discover ways they could reduce waste, while also helping other community partners. “The Maryland Food Bank, one of our main community partners, has a system “Meal Connect” that allows the Center to get large or small amounts of food leftover from events into other facilities who feed food vulnerable populations says Jennifer Douglass, BCC’s Communications & Marketing Manager. “They have a system – our deputy director calls it the ‘Uber of food’ – where say we have a gala and the gala has anything from 400lbs of macaroni and cheese to a large quantity of chicken, we put the leftover food into the system. In live time, non-profit organizations are able to tune into that and an organization that has a food kitchen and are ready to feed people that day, are able to do so with that food.” For food that isn’t fit for human consumption, BCC has a system that lets local pig farmers take leftover vegetables as feed. “It allows the farmer to spend less money, and so put their product out for less money, while also helping the community,” Douglass says. “It was really a wonderful way of repurposing something that would end up in the landfill otherwise.” It’s not just food the BCC is donating to the community. Conventions and meetings come with a variety of by-products that typically end up in a landfill after an event has ended. So instead of throwing these items away, they will be donated to various community organizations. They also partner with an organization called Second Chance, which trains at-risk individuals to dismantle older, abandoned homes in the Baltimore area and sell items of value. “It gives those people jobs and also a new skillset,”