BANGOR DAILY NEWS • February 8, 2021
The state has a decades-old law that’s meant to encourage more recycling and composting of household trash, with the goal of diverting at least half of that waste away from the more environmentally damaging options of the landfill or incinerator. But in reality, Maine has never hit that statutory goal since it was enacted in 1989 — and, if anything, it has been losing ground in recent years. The volume of rubbish annually going to Maine landfills and waste-to-energy plants has mostly been growing for at least six years, and those facilities are also taking in a bigger slice of the waste generated by towns and cities. A bill backed by the Natural Resources Council of Maine would create a first-in-the-nation program that would help shift the costs of disposing packaging materials from Maine residents to the companies that make the packaging.