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