Representatives of Harpswell’s Recycling Center and Recycling Committee recently got their first look inside the facility where the town’s recyclables are sorted for sale and eventual reuse.
Casella, the contractor paid by the town to haul away and process its recyclables, offered the mid-September tour after the Anchor reported on the rising cost of recycling in Harpswell.
Harpswell’s cost for recycling has more than tripled in the last decade and now exceeds the cost to dispose of trash. In interviews for the August story, town officials said they weren’t confident Casella was actually recycling the materials and they hadn’t been able to see inside the company’s material recovery facility in Lewiston.
September’s tour eased many of those fears.
“There’s so much negative conversation about what happens to recycling. It’s really good to see it actually happen,” said Harpswell Recycling Committee Chair Philip Conner. “I still feel like we pay a lot, but I’m gratified to see it’s being handled like it is.”
Casella spent between $3 million and $4 million to build the material recovery facility in Lewiston in 2014. The facility occupies a building leased from the city of Lewiston until 2034.
Recycling enters 25 tons at a time, disgorged from a tractor-trailer onto the floor of an enormous garage bay. Bits of cardboard are stuck high on the walls, remnants of the mountains of waste that rise and fall here.
A 25-foot-long front-end loader pushes piles back and forth. Its operator scans for scrap metal and other large objects before shoving the recyclables onto a conveyor belt that carries them up and out of sight.
Beyond, a two-story tangle of belts and enormous machines moves and separates recyclables, then compresses them into bales. Casella sells the bales of cardboard, aluminum and plastic to buyers that will make them into new raw materials.
Despite the roar of machinery, a dozen or so human beings do much of the sorting. Standing next to the conveyor belts, each picks one kind of recyclable from the passing stream. One man works at a frantic pace, leaning far over the belt to scoop light, clear plastics up by the armful and shovel them into a chute.
The sorters also watch for dangers, like wire and plastic bags that can get tangled in machinery. Rechargeable batteries fill a trash can further down the line. A growing hazard, they can catch fire quickly and are hard to extinguish. Steve Henderson, the facility’s manager, said workers see everything from Christmas ornaments to adult toys (neither is recyclable).
The machines play their part, too. A 40-foot-long rotating drum separates the lighter cardboard, paper and plastics from heavier objects. That’s a favorite for visitors from Harpswell, who take turns poking their phones through a hatch to film the tumbling recyclables.
Further on, a magnet whisks steel cans from the stream. Past a station of men grabbing plastics, a high-speed conveyor belt launches aluminum cans onto an adjacent belt. Lighter paper and plastics don’t make it, falling onto another belt below.
The facility is not all rumbling machinery and whizzing recyclables. In a relatively quiet corner, tinkling glass shards shower from a belt onto a pile on the floor. These pieces are taken to another facility, where machines sort them by color to be melted down and made into new objects.
Casella spokesperson Jeff Weld, who led the tour alongside Henderson and Talya Bent, a municipal account manager, emphasized the company’s commitment to producing clean, sorted waste. He said Casella’s goal is less than 1% contamination in each of the bales it sells. He said rejections from buyers, which happen if bales are too contaminated, are rare.
That commitment was on display at the last conveyor belt before the baling machine. A worker with a grabbing tool was plucking out stray objects, although some still made it by.
The Harpswell visitors were impressed by the operation.
“You read that plastic can’t be recycled,” said Recycling Committee member Gina Snyder, “but they’re doing it here.”
She said she was disappointed to see how much trash was mixed in with the recyclables.
Harpswell does a relatively good job of sorting its recycling. Officials say it contains about 5% to 7% trash, about a third of the nationwide average of 17%. But its recyclables are mixed with those from seven other towns at a facility in Bath before going to Lewiston. The recyclables the Lewiston facility receives include about 13% trash.
Donnette Goodenow, a Harpswell Recycling Center attendant known for her whimsical umbrella hat, said it was illuminating to see what happens to recyclables after they leave town.
Goodenow, who wore her hat inside the facility and joked with Henderson about getting to play with their toys all day, was impressed by how well Casella’s system sorted the mess that came out of the truck.
Chuck Perow, manager of Harpswell’s Recycling Center and Transfer Station, did not join the tour. He said he remains committed to Harpswell’s single-stream recycling program, but he is frustrated by the high cost. He said Harpswell’s rate will remain the same in 2026 as it was this year.
Perow said he wishes Harpswell’s relatively clean recycling didn’t have to be mixed with more contaminated recyclables, which increases the overall cost of the process, and he thinks Casella could do more to lower the town’s costs.
Perow said he hoped the tour would give Goodenow insight into the process so she could better answer questions at the Recycling Center and convince more people to recycle.
Recycling evangelism is also one of Casella’s goals. Weld said one way to bring down the cost of recycling for municipalities would be to install more automated machinery at the facility.
Earlier this year, Casella finished a $20 million upgrade of a material recovery facility in Connecticut, which has operated since 2008. Much of the sorting there is now done by video cameras, computers and machines. Those upgrades could be possible in Lewiston, too, said Weld, “if we can get more recyclables.”
Watch a video of the sorting process below.
