BANGOR DAILY NEWS • August 31, 2024
Wyatt Wells wore thick rubber gloves as he helped paw through several tons of household garbage at ecomaine’s Blueberry Road waste-to-energy facility on Wednesday morning. The trash-picking was part of a statewide audit of Maine’s waste stream organized by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. It’s designed to find out what the state’s growing population throws away most, and then help devise ways to divert that material from costly, environmentally unfriendly landfills and trash incinerators. The goal is to help reduce the amounts of waste that communities are burying in the ground. That has come at a growing cost to the environment, as well as to taxpayers who must cover the rising costs of disposing of all that waste.