An excellent resource from #EcoMaine!

#FoodWaste and #Composting

"Did you know that almost a third of what we throw away is leftover or spoiled food? If Maine is to achieve a 50% recycling rate, we need to recover our food waste, too – it’s worth the weight!

"ecomaine added food waste recycling to our sustainable waste management solutions in order to help Maine reach its recycling goal. We continue to build food waste recycling capacity in southern Maine, serving as a central collection point for grocery stores, institutions, and participating cities and towns.

"Collected food waste is transported to #ExeterME’s #AgriEnergy [#AgricycleEnergy] to be de-packaged and anaerobically digested to produce sustainable power, organic farm #fertilizer, and cow bedding for the #Maine family dairy farm #StonyvaleFarm. Any packaging removed from the food waste is delivered back to ecomaine to be burned for energy—keeping all of it out of our #landfills!

"By making #composting, anaerobic digestion, and food waste recycling so easy, we encourage our communities to dispose of their waste responsibly.

"For more on compost that’s 'Worth The Weight,' check out our informational pamphlet!

#BackyardComposting

"Backyard composting is one of the easiest ways to keep organic material out of the trash. It also has some other great advantages:

- It doesn’t weigh your trash down as much.
- It doesn’t get into ecomaine‘s waste-to-energy plant, making our combustion more damp and less efficient.
- It’s easy – and “grass-cycling” (leaving clippings on the lawn) is better for your grass!
- It saves Maine’s towns money on collection and hauling.
- And it saves YOU money on trash bags!

"There are no trucks or driving involved – no carbon emissions! You just walk it out to your bin, and that’s it.

"In the end, composting produces rich #soil for flower and vegetable #gardens – without paying for it (again) at the store.

Drop Off Locations

"If you’re looking for a compost drop-off location, instead of putting it in your backyard, here are a few… If you know of one that’s not here, let us know! (Some facilities may be for residents only; we advise calling ahead if you’re not sure.)

[I've found that transfer stations are usually residents only...]

#BridgtonME Transfer Station
118 Sandy Creek Rd, Bridgton, ME, USA

#BrownfieldME Transfer Station
Pequawket Trail, Brownfield, ME, USA

#CapeElizabethME Recycling Center
10 Cooper Dr, Cape Elizabeth, ME, USA

#EliotME Recycling Center
468 Dow Highway, Eliot, ME, USA

#FalmouthME Community Park
Winn Rd, Falmouth, ME, USA

#FalmouthME Transfer Station
100 Woods Rd, Falmouth, ME, USA

#FalmouthME Village Park
22 Hat Trick Drive, Falmouth, ME

#FreeportME Recycling Center
100 Landfill Road, Freeport, ME, USA

#NorthYarmouthME Town Hall / #SamRistichNatureTrail, North Yarmouth, ME, USA

#PortlandME: #BoydStreet #CommunityGarden
2 Boyd Street, Portland, ME

Portland: #BrentwoodFarms Community Garden
Brentwood Street, Portland, ME

Portland: #Libbytown Community Garden
175 Douglass Street, Portland, ME

Portland: #NorthStreetCommunityGarden
195 North Street, Portland, ME

Portland: Parkside/King Middle School
In the back of the school near the Fitzpatrick Stadium parking lot
92 Deering Avenue, Portland, ME

Portland: #PaysonPark Community Garden
Dropoff located on Front Street.
Front Street, Portland, Maine

Portland: #ReicheSchool
Dropoff is on the Clark Street side.
166 Brackett Street, Portland, ME

Portland: #Riverton Community Garden
45 Verrill Street, Portland, Maine

#SacoME Dept. of Public Works
15 Phillips Spring Road, Saco, ME

Saco Parks & Rec
75 Franklin St, Saco, ME, USA

#ScarboroughME Public Works Facility
20 Washington Avenue, Scarborough, ME, USA

#SouthPortlandME City Hall
25 Cottage Rd, South Portland, ME, USA

South Portland Code Enforcement Office
496 Ocean Street, South Portland, ME

South Portland Golf Course Maint. Building
221 Westbrook Street, South Portland, ME, USA

South Portland High School
637 Highland Avenue, South Portland, ME, USA

South Portland Transfer Station
929 Highland Ave, South Portland, ME, USA

South Portland: Redback Community Center
95 Macarthur Circle West, South Portland, ME

#StandishME Transfer Station
150 Moody Rd, Standish, ME, USA

#SurryME: #ChickadeeCompost
Jill's Lane, Surry, Maine www.chickadeecompost.com

#VinalhavenME Transfer Station
178 Round the Island Rd, Vinalhaven, ME, USA

#YarmouthME Transfer Station
659 East Main Street, Yarmouth, ME, USA

Curbside Collection

And if you’re really not into the backyard thing, there are some companies who will pick it up for you!

- #WeCompostIt! (Greater Portland)
- #GarbageToGarden (Greater Portland)
- #ScrapDogs (Greater #CamdenME-#RockportME)
- #MrFoxComposting (Southern Maine & #NH)
- #ProjectEarth (Lincoln County)
- #ChickadeeCompost (All of #BlueHillME Peninsula, #DeerIsleME, #EllsworthME)
- #OneEarth Composting (#HampdenME)
- #AgriCycle Energy (Collection from businesses & organizations for anaerobic digestion – all over!)

Other Compost Resources:

Maine Department of Environmental Protection
207-592-0455

University of Maine Cooperative Extension
207-581-3188

Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions at the University of Maine – Food Recovery
207-581-3195

Maine Organic Farmers & Gardeners Association [#MOFGA]
207-568-4142

#WormMainea
207-831-3752

#MainelyWorm Bins

#UncleJimsWormFarm
1-800-373-0555

Source (with links):
https://www.ecomaine.org/food-waste-and-composting/

#SolarpunkSunday #Composting #WormBins #ReducingWaste
#Landfills #Maine #WasteToEnergy

So, my neighbor (who is on our town's select board) made the excellent suggestion that places that are more rural should invest in providing low-cost or free composters for folks to compost their own food waste (something that #ecomaine encourages)! Some more urban areas use #GarbageToGarden or #WeCompostIt services [see next post] to deal with food waste, which is sometimes where #Agricycle gets involved! #EcoMaine has been partnering with Agricycle since 2016!

Ecomaine Launches Food Waste Recovery Service

Maine Public | By Patty Wight
Published September 7, 2016

"Open up a refrigerator and the chances of finding limp lettuce or soggy squash are pretty high. Here in the U.S., it’s likely that this food will find its way into the garbage — according to the USDA, at least 30 percent of the nation’s food supply is wasted.

"A new program launched Wednesday by ecomaine aims to get that food out of the trash and give it a second life as #compost or energy.

"When confronted with produce past its prime, says ecomaine’s CEO Kevin Roche, there’s really one major roadblock that steers people toward dropping it in the trash versus a compost bucket.

" 'The ‘ick’ factor is what I call it,' he says.

"Rotten food is messy, it smells and it attracts fruit flies. But Roche says ecomaine now has a unique way to manage the ick factor: by sealing that food waste in a clear plastic bag.

" 'You go to the grocery store, and when you buy your oranges or your head of broccoli, and the first thing you usually do is put it in a clear bag. And we feel that could be an avenue for us to contain the ick factor and get a second use out of that plastic bag,' he says.

"Starting Wednesday, ecomaine accepts food waste knotted up in plastic bags. Ecomaine doesn’t collect the bags itself. It consolidates waste picked up by commercial services, such as Garbage to Garden or #WeCompostIt!, at a cost of about $55 a ton.

"On Wednesday morning, a collection truck from #AgriCycleEnergy unloads a giant salad of rotten corn, peppers, tomatoes and other produce at ecomaine’s facility in Portland.

" 'We’re collecting from restaurants, colleges, hospitals, and a variety of other generators of food waste,' says Dan Bell, manager at Agri-Cycle Energy in #ExeterMaine, where all of this produce consolidated at ecomaine will eventually go.

" 'A special machine at Agri-Cycle Energy removes the plastic bags, which are returned to ecomaine to be burned for electricity. The food waste, meanwhile, is blended with an equal amount of cow #manure from a nearby dairy farm, then heated and churned for about 30 days using a process called anaerobic digestion.

" 'We have two large domes, and it’s essentially enclosed, so we’re capturing all of the gases in the process of breaking down food waste,' Bell says.

"The #biogas is used to produce heat and electricity. And the food waste, he says Bell, turns into #fertilizer and animal bedding.

" 'This is material that’s been in the waste stream forever. And it always will be. And it’ll always be something that has to be handled. But pulling it out and removing it and source separating it allows companies like ours and other #digesters across the country to put that material to work for us, versus just sitting in a landfill,' he says.

"Because food generally doesn’t break down in landfills. A couple years ago, Roche says ecomaine dug down into one of its landfills.

" 'We found chicken breasts that were 25 years old, tomatoes, Ruffles potato chips that were 25 years old,' he says.

"Roche says businesses and consumers can prevent food waste through correct planning. But when lost or forgotten food is discovered in the dark recesses of a fridge, that’s where ecomaine’s food waste recovery program comes in.

"Initially, he says, it won’t account for a huge chunk of what ecomaine processes, which amounts to 170,000 tons of trash and 45,000 tons of recycling per year.

" 'Even if we can get upwards of five tons a year, we feel that would be a good start to our program,' Roche says.

"It’s an important step, he says, toward reaching Maine’s statewide recycling goal of 50 percent by 2021."

[I'm wondering how close Maine is to that goal?]

Source:
https://www.mainepublic.org/environment-and-outdoors/2016-09-07/ecomaine-launches-food-waste-recovery-service

#SolarpunkSunday #Digesters #Composting #ReducingWaste #Landfills #Maine #Recycling #WasteToEnergy #Compost

So, I caught a glimpse of #EcoMaine's new recycling facility, which has been completed. The new imaging technology will help separate recyclables even faster and more efficiently! Pretty cool stuff!

#Ecomaine plans $25 million #recycling center upgrade

#MainePublic | By Peter McGuire
Published September 9, 2024

"One of Maine’s largest recyclers is planning a multi-million dollar upgrade of its Portland plant in anticipation of handling more cardboard and other household waste.

"Ecomaine, a #CommunityOwned corporation, plans to spend up to $25.2 million on state-of-the-art sorting equipment at a new recycling plant near its Portland headquarters.

"CEO Kevin Roche said the new automated sorting machines use #ImagingTechnology to separate mixed recycling such as paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and aluminum.

"The equipment will replace the company's current machines, installed around 2006.

"Back then, newsprint made up most of the recycling ecomaine handled, according to Roche. With a boom in online shopping and home delivery, however, cardboard has become the top material it handles.

" 'Paper packing has really taken over the recycling bin, so we need a new design and plus the new system is nearly 20 years old,' Roche said.

"The market for recyclables has rebounded from a slump after China stopped accepting most U.S. solid waste about seven years ago.

"American companies retrofitted mills to process used cardboard into more packaging material, boosting domestic demand, Roche said.

"But local policy is also likely to increase the amount of material ecomaine handles, he added.

"Maine regulators are finalizing requirements that producers pay for the cost of disposing #packaging waste. The extended producer responsibility program would reimburse towns and cities for their recycling programs.

"With that policy in place, Roche said that more communities will likely expand programs or revive abandoned recycling rather than 'leave money on the table.'

" 'So that in concert with public outcry for more recycling and more recovery, those two things are going to go hand in hand and I think, expand recycling programs,' Roche said.

"The company hopes its expansion will allow it to add more member communities that own and send waste to the Portland facility.

"Ecomaine plans to borrow $35.5 million through a bond issue for the recycling upgrade and a landfill expansion. Adding more landfill space will give the company seven more years to store ash from its waste-to-energy [#WTE] plant, according to the company.

"The public corporation is owned by a collection of towns and cities in southern Maine. It serves about 73 communities statewide."

Source:
https://www.mainepublic.org/climate/2024-09-09/ecomaine-plans-25-million-recycling-center-upgrade

#SolarPunkSunday #Recycle #TrashToEnergy #FoodWasteComposting #GarbageToGarden #Maine

So, some communities in #Maine were like, #NIMBY when a #TrashToEnergy plant was proposed. After all, folks had to deal with air quality issues with the old paper mill in Westbrook for many years (it was still belching smelly shit when I worked at a local library). However, #EcoMaine built the plant, and from what I can tell, they are doing it the right way. Our community signed up for participating in their program years ago, and now there are 20 communities participating. ecomaine has even upgraded their facility to be able to retrieve even more usable metal from the resultant ashes. And they are implementing programs based on Maine policy change, which requires businesses that do a lot of shipping (like Amazon) to make their packaging recyclable and to pay for communities to deal with packaging waste (more about that in another post).

Anyhow, here is more information about ecomaine's #WasteToEnergy plant...

ecomaine’s Waste-to-Energy Power Plant

"Our waste-to-energy #(WTE) plant receives trash identified as #unrecyclable and converts it at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit to energy in the form of electricity. The ecomaine WTE plant processes about 175,000 tons of trash a year and, from that process, generates enough steam to create about 100,000 megawatt-hours of electricity annually.

"That’s enough electricity to power our WTE and recycling facilities, our company’s electric vehicles, plus about 15,000 homes for a year!

"Converting the trash to energy also benefits the communities we serve by reducing its volume by 90 percent, leaving only inert ash to be stored at the landfill site. (There are also statewide economic benefits from WTE plants; read the results of a Maine study -- linked below).

"By reducing the volume of trash by 90%, controlling #pollution, and generating #electricity, waste-to-energy clearly has many benefits. These and more are outlined in a 2021 study by Dr. Marco Castaldi, The Scientific Truth about Waste to Energy Facilities and Quantifiable Benefits They Provide. (Sneak Peek: did you know that areas in the U.S. with waste-to-energy have higher #recycling rates than those without?) "

Source:
https://www.ecomaine.org/our-facility/waste-to-energy-plant/

Maine study:
https://www.ecomaine.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/WTE-econ-benefits.pdf

#SolarPunkSunday #Recycling #Reclamation #ReducingWaste #Landfills #Maine

In other news, I learned a lot about #EcoMaine's new programs while watching their presentation to our town's select board. One of the newly elected board members (a neighbor of mine), suggested the town look into helping to provide composters for the residents to help cut down on #FoodWaste (and which makes way more sense in a rural area, where people have the acreage to compost stuff, rather than have #GarbageToGarden services, which involved plastic bags and transporting food waste). Of course, I had to send the board member information about discounted composters for municipalities. Anyhow, I'll be posting about some of what I learned from EcoMaine's presentation on #SolarPunkSunday!

#Composting #GardeningHacks #TrashToEnergy #Recycling