Katrina Venhuizen, Senior Environmental Educator, ecomaine
You’ve reduced, re-used and recycled everything you can, carefully following the guidelines for what can and cannot be recycled by your city or town. But perhaps you still feel guilty about throwing something away. Or maybe you accidently put something in the recycling bin hoping it was recyclable but found out later it was not (wish-cycling).
While it is important to reduce, reuse and recycle appropriately, there are some things that just need to go into the trash. Fortunately for more than 70 towns in Maine, ecomaine takes your trash and converts it to electricity, while reducing it in size and volume. So you don’t have to “wish-cycle” to try and keep items out of the ever-growing landfills.
Recycling Center and Waste to Energy plant images for annual report.
Photos by Brian Fitzgerald.
What about pollution, you might ask? Pollution is created in the burning process, but it is captured by ecomaine’s rigorous pollution control systems and testing process. In fact, these emissions (which are 96% water vapor) are regulated by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and are consistently well below allowable limits.
The combusted trash turns to ash and leftover metals after the burning process. These metals are taken out by a large magnet that removes about 12 tons of metal per day, and the ash is taken to an “ashfill” just three miles down the road from the ecomaine waste-to-energy facility.
This ash is only 10% of the original size and volume that it was at your curbside or transfer station, so it takes up far landfill less space than it would otherwise. What’s more, it doesn’t emit methane like raw trash does, and it doesn’t run off and pollute waterways. Plus, it helps to cover ecomaine’s costs when we sell this clean electricity to the grid.
So, while not everything can be reduced, reused, recycled or composted, we can take comfort knowing that ecomaine’s waste-to-energy building uses the industry’s best and cleanest practices to safely reduce our trash and make electricity for up to 15,000 homes per year at the same time!
Come see it in action! ecomaine offers tours five days a week! Learn more at ecomaine.org.
