ORONO — The Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions is scheduled to host a talk about sustainability in Maine’s secondhand economies.

The talk is to be held from 3 to 4 p.m. Monday, Sept. 20, both remotely via Zoom and in person at 107 Norman Smith Hall on the University of Maine campus.

While Mainers have been reusing goods for a long time, concerns around climate change, resource scarcity and depletion, and increasing levels of waste have focused new attention on the potential for reuse to address sustainability in how goods are made, used and discarded every day.

In this talk, “Digging for Buried Treasure: Hidden Gems in Maine’s Reuse Markets,” Cynthia Isenhour and Brieanne Berry will draw on the results of a five-year research project to outline the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainability hiding in plain sight in Maine’s secondhand economies.

Isenhour is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Climate Change Institute at UMaine. Her research will focus on how history, culture and power shape environmental governance and policy.

Berry is a postdoctoral researcher at UMaine whose work centers on sustainable consumption and waste reduction, with a particular focus on the impacts of reuse.

All talks in the Mitchell Center’s Sustainability Talks series are free.

Registration is required to attend remotely via Zoom; to register and receive connection information, visit umaine.edu/mitchellcenter.

Face coverings are required through at least Sept. 30 for students, staff, faculty, visitors and others when indoors at a University of Maine System facility.

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