Although July has come and gone, the South Portland Sustainability Office still has single-use plastics on the brain. Plastic Free July was an eye-opening experience that ultimately altered our consumer habits. In the office, we have been talking about single-use plastic consumption all month long, but now, we want to hear what you have to […]

We mentioned Sam Silverman in last week’s column, when his expertise was called upon to catch a monkey that had escaped from a traveling carnival. In his time, Samuel Silverman was a well-known member of the South Portland community. Let’s take a look at the life of this interesting entrepreneur and his wife. Silverman was […]

Join us Friday, Aug. 12 from 9 to 10 a.m. for this month’s Coffee & Climate featuring En-ROADS and Citizens’ Climate Lobby. This month we will be joined by Peter Dugas, En-ROADS climate ambassador and Citizens’ Climate Lobby liaison, for an introductory tour of MIT’s En-ROADS climate simulator. Join us to learn how this tool […]

Old Sparhawk Mills was a fixture in Mill Creek for over 35 years. The company was incorporated in 1922 and was originally located in Portland. After just a couple of years, however, the business moved to South Portland and it remained in operation on Cottage Road from 1925 to 1961, then moved to Yarmouth. A […]

For the month of July, the South Portland Sustainability Office attempted to be plastic free and asked residents to join us. A core reason the South Portland Sustainability Office decided to pursue going plastic free for a month was to acknowledge how difficult it is to be plastic free, find the areas of our life […]

At our July Coffee and Climate session, Dr. Cindy Isenhour of the University of Maine described New England as the attic of the United States, and Maine “the attic of that attic.” This was in reference to our region’s engrained tradition of reuse, full of antique shops, thrift stores, and garage sales. Maine’s reuse economy […]

This week, we finish looking at the two sardine factories that existed in South Portland in the 1900s. The two canneries were both on the waterfront in Ferry Village. The E.W. Brown cannery was located farthest east, at the end of a dirt driveway that led from Front Street to the start of the breakwater […]