Four members of our region’s Committee for a Plastic-free Peninsula (PFP) took time away from busy Christmas prep in mid-December to drive a couple of hours to Hampden. Their objective was to learn more about a newly opened Coastal Resources of Maine plant that processes the trash from over 100 Maine communities, including ours. The Coastal Resources plant is powered by Fiberight technology, which uses the most advanced technologies in the U.S. to create many types of recycled products from household trash.

The foursome, which included Nancy Adams, Peg Helming, Abby Jones, and Robin Jordan, had arranged for a private tour of the plant, which began operations last April. After greetings from their guide, Shelby Wright, Coastal Resources’ director of community services, the Boothbay visitors put on hard hats, heavy gloves, and boots, as shown in the nearby photograph, necessary as they climbed and descended steep stairways and crossed slippery floors while viewing and learning about how garbage is sorted and recycled in the new facility.

After the tour, a restaurant lunch was in order, although the group feared they might be exuding an unsavory smell of trash that would bother other customers. It turned out that no one seemed to notice them, and, after lunch, the foursome returned to Boothbay. They were enthusiastic as they related their experience, first, to the rest of the PFP committee, and, here, to Register readers.

Coastal Resources and the Boothbay Region Transfer Station

Coastal Resources of Maine, LLC, is a corporation based in Maryland, where the Fiberight technology was developed over a ten-year period. 116 Maine municipalities have contracted with Coastal Resources to take their solid waste for recycling. Solid waste is the trash that remains after recycling, and until Fiberight came to Maine, all that trash was trucked to a landfill. Fiberight is able to recycle at least 50% of the trash waste that comes into the plant. Fiberight’s advanced technology has attracted visitors from China, Canada, Spain and other countries to the plant in Hampden to assess its possibilities for their use.

Once at the plant, the trash is de-bagged, placed on a conveyer, then split into streams based on size. With the use of high-tech optical sorting, magnets, and electric fields, the different types of glass, plastics, metals, and cardboard are recovered from the waste stream and recycled for re-use as a raw material. Certain components of trash, such as plastic film and wrap, are selected out of the waste stream and compacted into briquettes, which can be used for internal energy generation by local businesses.

The remaining mixture of trash and paper is treated with water, in which organic materials dissolve and the paper is broken down into pulp, the building block of new paper. Coastal Resources is the first recycling facility in the U.S. with a pulper. It can recycle all the fiber-based materials in trash, including dirty paper plates, coffee cups, and pizza boxes, saving them all from the landfill.

The watery stream of organic waste flows into an “anaerobic digester,” which converts the waste into renewable natural gas, available for use to offset the use of fossil fuels. Coastal Resources hopes to contract with Maine’s hospitals, schools, and other organizations once it has completed the process of complying with the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s regulations.

The Boothbay Region Refuse Transfer Station sends about 30 tons of trash that remains after residents have sorted their recyclables to Coastal Resources every week. Coastal Resources’ Shelby Wright told the visitors that the Boothbay region has “the Cadillac of transfer stations.”

Steve Lewis, our Transfer Station manager, with help from Boothbay Region TV and Media Center (BRTV), has produced a 30-minute video about the transfer station that covers plastic and all other items that are recyclable. The video is available on the Transfer Station’s website, www.boothbayrefuse.com