On behalf of Fiberight, Coastal Resources of Maine, and its project partners at Municipal Review Committee (MRC), SCS Engineers is excited to announce that as of Nov. 1, 2019, commercial operations have begun at the Hampden, Maine advanced solid waste recycling and processing facility.
To achieve commercial operations, the facility began accepting waste in April 2019 and has undergone an extensive ramp-up and commissioning process to integrate the various components of the first of its kind waste recycling and processing facility contracted to accept and process municipal solid waste and recycling from the MRC’s 115 member communities. The facility will begin to offer disposal options to non-MRC communities and independent commercial waste haulers in the region as well.
The new advanced solid waste recycling and processing plant boasts a seven-step next-generation recycling technology that recovers valuable materials from everyday household waste and processes them into value-added products. The facility is the first to integrate separate technologies into one integrated system to process household waste, optimize material recovery, and provide recycling and processing solutions under one roof.
Fiberight spokesperson Shelby Wright stated, “Coastal Resources of Maine is highly efficient and is well-suited to meet the long-term waste processing and recycling needs of our communities in addition to offering valuable feedstock for the fuel and fiber markets in the region.”
With the busy holiday season upon us, Americans are purchasing millions of presents on-line and at stores, and USEPA’s recent announcement that it will be issuing national recycling goals next year, the timing couldn’t be better.
In September the City of Bangor will formally move over to a new arrangement in which residents will throw all of their recycling in with their trash and leave the mixed waste to be picked up from the curbside every week, as now happens with trash.
Bangor will also close their local recycling station as part of the city’s switch to a new integrated waste conversion plant in Hampden developed by Coastal Resources of Maine with Fiberight technology. The new facility includes a materials recovery facility (MRF), organic processing, plastics processing, anaerobic digestion (AD) and wastewater treatment. The integrated technology is intended to increase recycling rates without the need for extensive outreach programs and is easier for customers to use. According to Coastal Resources of Maine, the benefits are:
The advanced technologies are undergoing final testing at the Hampden, Maine facility, and are already in use at automated material recovery facilities in the United States and in Europe. The end product is cleaner and provides more diverse types of materials that can then be reused to create new products.
The Hampden facility’s advanced MRF has a high degree of separation, recovery, and monetization of commodity products, and then employs additional processes for generating clean cellulose, engineered fuels, and biogas from traditionally non-recyclable materials. Hired for the firm’s technical expertise and experience planning large municipal solid waste and biogas programs and facilities, SCS provided an in-depth examination and analysis of the technologies, program sustainability, and potential economic impacts of the facility.
The facility will serve 116 municipalities and public entities represented by the Municipal Review Committee, a non-profit organization that currently manages the waste disposal activities in Eastern and Northern Maine. The facility is planning to start accepting waste from its municipal customers shortly.
“With the planning and cooperation of many, Fiberight’s providing a truly sustainable solution in Maine while solving several challenges when consumers separate their recyclable materials and eliminating contamination,” stated Bob Gardner, SCS Engineers Senior VP. “The facility is capable of reusing nearly 150,000 tons of what formerly went into a landfill, is processing more municipal solid waste into high-value commodities, and is helping local municipalities and private waste haulers offset the cost of recycling.”
