After a nearly two-year effort, we can finally enjoy the success of effecting a move from mostly landfilling our trash to a program at ecomaine, where it will be fed to their waste-to-energy plant in Portland! I am told by town officials that there is one item on each contract to be decided, but that the agreements will be retroactive to July 1, 2022, when we officially become a partner with ecomaine. That change will save Brunswick a lot of dollars, but will also save a great deal of environmental damage by dramatically reducing the amount of CO2e (Carbon Dioxide equivalent) produced in the transport and landfilling operations. That goal was achieved only with a lot of dedicated citizen support.

When the Recycling and Sustainability Committee began the effort to move to ecomaine for our trash and recycling processing, not everyone on the Town Council was ready to make the change. When the Council voted in early April of this year to accept the final package, the vote was unanimously in favor. That meant, in some cases, our Councilors needed to put aside their personal beliefs and go with the desires of the community. They were able to do that because the community’s desires were clearly conveyed to them. Thank You!

What we need to understand here is that our trash will not actually be hauled to Portland every day. The plan is that Casella Systems, who collect our trash now, will continue to do so, and will continue to take it to their West Bath Transfer Station. From there it will go to the Casella Processing facility and on to wherever it goes now (mostly either to the PERC waste-to-energy plant in Orrington, or the Juniper Ridge landfill).

An equal tonnage of waste will then be moved, on our behalf, from Casella’s Westbrook Transfer Station to ecomaine. The net effect is that an amount of waste equal to what we discard will be removed from the “landfill stream” and diverted to ecomaine’s waste-to-energy plant. The advantage to Brunswick of using the swap arrangement is three-fold. First, it saves us almost $300,000 in transportation costs by our paying only to haul the stuff to West Bath, rather than the much longer trip to Portland. Secondly, it avoids the very significant environmental damage of running packer trucks up and down the highway three times a day. Third, as I understand it, the time required for the trips to Portland would also require an additional packer truck for our collection routes, which this arrangement avoids.

The recycling side is being covered by clauses that make Casella responsible for any contamination levels beyond some tight limits. That’s great, but I think it also means we need to play fair with Casella and ensure the recycling they pick up is at least as clean as what they deliver to ecomaine. That gives them every opportunity to make money on the recycling commodities, and keeps us in practice in case our situation changes in the future. You will continue to hear how to recycle better, and continue to be pressed to do it in the best way we can. The more tons of clean recycling we collect here, the more tons get recycled at ecomaine, and the cleaner those tons are, the less everyone will spend on recycling.

The Recycle Bin is a weekly column on what to recycle, what not to recycle, and why, in Brunswick. The public is encouraged to submit questions by email to brunsrecycleinfo@gmail.com. Harry Hopcroft is a member of the Brunswick Recycling and Sustainability Committee. This column is a product of his own research.

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