Facility

The facilities’ state-of-the-art recycling facility in Hampden is a powerful asset for Maine – positioning it as a national leader in next-generation waste processing, protecting Maine’s renowned natural resources, and using environmental business as an economic engine to lower costs to residents, create jobs, and make Maine businesses more competitive.

As the first next generation recycling facility in the country, the facility uses its innovative process to help eliminate household sorting. This method of recycling will increase the level of municipal solid waste diverted from landfills from the typical 10-30% to over 50% thereby preserving dwindling landfill space for true waste with no beneficial reuse and keeping disposal costs low for residents.

Facility Process Overview

Feedstock: An unsorted stream of MSW is delivered to the facility, mostly comprising of unopened black trash bags. The MRF processes and separates the waste through several sorting techniques into segregated streams that are then either sold as a recycled product, further processed or disposed at a landfill.

Recycled Products: i) Recycled Commodities: Homogenous streams, such as plastics and metals, are baled/sold to regional customers for further processing. ii) RNG: Two MRF outflow streams, paper and the organic fraction, are anaerobically digested to generate biogas that is upgraded to renewable natural gas for injection into the pipeline, and iii) Mixed LDPE Films: Films (plastic bags) can be sent through a densification process to make an engineered fuel or can be processed to generate circular plastic products

Residual Disposal: Disposition of material streams not recovered during initial project build-out & operations as follows:

• Outflow MRF streams that cannot be further processed are disposed at landfill as a Residual. Additionally, digestate generated during the AD process will be de-watered sent to landfill. However, ~50% of the total landfill disposal meets characterization of an ADC used for landfill topping/capping/construction.
• Continued diligence on Shredded Residual Fuel market (SRF) to identify regional demand. Until viable customer identified for SRF, the respective stream is diverted to landfill.

Recycling

Recycling with the facility ensures mainstream recyclables like paper, plastic and metal, inadvertently tossed in the trash are recovered rather than buried in a landfill.

The facility’s team focuses on transforming municipal solid waste (MSW) into green energy products by recovering everyday recyclable materials and converting what’s left into products such as biogas and biofuel.

Our Hampden, Maine project will change the way Maine deals with its trash.