When you have 900 pounds of eggplant and don’t know what to do with it, you call Steve Knight.

Knight, 71, volunteers his time “gleaning,” taking fruits, vegetables and other items that would otherwise go to waste and putting them to use elsewhere.

“I’ve been concerned with waste,” Knight said. “We waste so much – myself included. I just try to cut down on that.”

Knight, who lives in Waterville, taught chemistry at Winthrop High School for 25 years. He retired in 2015 and has been gleaning ever since, moving thousands of pounds of food around central Maine in his van.

Knight now organizes six volunteers that call themselves the Central Maine Gleaners Group – CMG², for short. They pick up extra produce from farms, the Waterville Farmers Market, hospitals and other places and bring it to local nonprofits, libraries and food pantries to distribute.

Steve Knight of Waterville started the Central Maine Gleaning Group when he retired nine years ago. Knight donate produce and food that otherwise might be thrown out to food pantries as well as free food stands throughout Waterville. Gregory Rec/Staff Photographer

The group also brings food to “share tables” at various locations around Waterville and neighboring towns, including Knight’s home, where anyone can take it for free.

In 2023, the group gleaned more than 20,000 pounds of food, according to Knight.

The Muskie Community Center in Waterville, operated by Spectrum Generations, a nonprofit that serves older and disabled adults, is among the organizations that receives the gleaned food. Knight and his fellow volunteers bring in about 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of produce each year to serve the hundreds of people who participate in the center’s food programs, according to Rob Stone, the sous chef there.

“It’s huge for us,” Stone said. “It saves us a lot of money, and it helps provide healthy food to the people that come in and the people that get Meals on Wheels. The excitement that’s on the faces of the local people when we have fresh native tomatoes, for example, or the fresh cucumbers, when they come in – people line up.”

Knight recently expanded his efforts to gleaning medical supplies. He takes items like beds, crutches and canes and brings them to a hospice organization in Skowhegan.

Those kinds of supplies, like food, often are not used fully, Knight said. One man in Vassalboro, for example, called Knight to take supplies he had bought for his wife, who died before she could use them.

“It was brand new. It was still in the box,” Knight said. “But he can’t return it.”

In the summer, Knight also runs the Edible Main Street project in Waterville. This year, backed by a grant, Knight tended to four planter boxes downtown, where anyone passing by could stop and snack on a cherry tomato, a nasturtium or some sweet basil. Next year, Knight is planning to expand to six gardens.

“I really like it,” Knight said of his various volunteering efforts. “It’s my niche.”