The Municipal Review Committee (MRC) is the group that oversees where trash and recycling go for 115 municipalities in Maine, with members ranging from Millinocket to Friendship, and Guilford to Bar Harbor. When the Fiberight facility closed, all waste was sent to two landfills. State law requires waste to energy plants to have a bypass plan for this very reason. The trash was being sent to the Waste Management Crossroads Landfill in Norridgewock and the Juniper Ridge Landfill in Old Town.

Landfills are the lowest destination for garbage on the waste hierarchy and the MRC acted to move the waste somewhere else.”We’re pleased with that arrangement because it is higher up on the waste hierarchy and also we’re super fortunate that Waste Management was willing to work with us to facilitate that agreement,” Karren Fussell, the President of the MRC Board of Directors, said.

During a virtual town hall Wednesday it announced Waste Management allowed the MRC to remove 75% of the waste it was bringing to landfills and now all that trash and recycling is going to the Penobscot Energy Recovery Company (PERC) in Orrington, temporarily. “We know what it’s like to bring a new facility online, there’s nothing easy about that,” Plant Manager Henry Lang said. Lang added the MRC and PERC had a partnership for 30 years but when the Fiberight facility opened, the 115 cities and towns apart of the MRC went with it.

To read the full story, visit https://www.newscentermaine.com/article/money/business/municipal-review-committee-is-removing-75-of-its-waste-from-landfills/97-70417ff9-ac85-4d69-9d49-6af734a28bca.
Author: Sam Rogers, NEWS CENTER Maine
Image: NCM

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