BANGOR DAILY NEWS • January 10, 2022
Communities in the Bangor area and elsewhere that dropped local recycling programs ahead of the start of a new waste facility in Hampden haven’t brought those programs back, and appear unlikely to, even as the plant has remained closed for more than a year and a half. That means that years after a new waste plant promised to remove recyclables from loads of trash and prevent more of the area’s waste from ending up in landfills, many of the communities that opted to send their waste there are left with virtually no recycling. All of their waste in the meantime — trash and recyclables — is going either to the Penobscot Energy Recovery Co. incinerator in Orrington or to landfills.