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