What is the process for recycling and processing?

The facility involves specialty, custom built front-end processing equipment for the incoming MSW that recovers recyclable materials and converts organic materials to biofuels. While strides have been made to increase recycling, there are still a number of recyclables that remain in household MSW even after diversion by local recycling programs.  We expect that as additional investment is made it will enhance the  capture rate for recovering materials will have a large impact on the ability of our member communities as they strive to meet the State of Maine’s proposed recycling rate, which has stayed stagnant for over 20 years despite repeated efforts to raise it.

Following the capture of recyclables, the facility capitalizes on the organic material that makes up approximately 40% of MSW.  Through a proprietary accelerated anaerobic digestion process – cooking or boiling down in a manner of speaking – the facility converts the MSW to biofuel.  Our goal is to have approximately 80% of incoming material recycled or converted to energy or other saleable products.  This amount will likely increase as some of the residuals that were originally thought to be of no value can now be used, for example, as an additive to processed plastics to make briquettes for use as boiler fuels.