BANGOR DAILY NEWS • December 16, 2020
When nearly 3 tons of shredded plastic trash from Northern Ireland was accidentally dumped into Penobscot Bay earlier this month, Maine environmentalists decried a loophole in state law that allows waste to be reclassified as in-state waste as long as it goes through some level of processing here. That’s allowed tons of construction and demolition debris banned from Massachusetts landfills to end up in the state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town. And it’s allowed PERC to take in waste from outside of Maine for years. Exporting plastic waste from the U.K. to the U.S. may violate the Basel Convention, an international agreement that establishes standards for the transboundary movement of hazardous waste, solid waste and municipal incinerator ash.