Maine manufacturers join forces to cut waste

Photo / Tim Greenway Rob Tod, left, founder of Allagash Brewing, and facilities manager Luke Truman, inside the brewery at 50 Industrial Way in Portland. Allagash, which sells more than 100,000 barrels of beer a year in 17 states plus the District of Columbia, is leading a cross-industry initiative to reduce and repurpose manufacturing waste in Maine.

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By Renee Cordes

At Allagash Brewing Co. in Portland, founder Rob Tod speaks as enthusiastically about reducing waste as he does about product expansion at Maine’s largest brewer. It’s known for its Belgian-style ales.

“I’m amazed as I look around here,” he says at the bustling tasting room on a recent morning, “how many homes we have found for how many waste streams.”

Examples include collecting corks from specialty bottles and shipping them to a company that turns them into yoga blocks and sandals, reusing all packing materials from peanuts to bubble wraps on outgoing shipments and donating stainless steel leftovers to a vocational tech program for welders.

“Not only does it not get wasted, it’s reused as an educational tool to train people to weld,” Tod says. “And who knows, maybe some of those people will be welders here during a future installation.”

As Allagash presses on with its own sustainability efforts, it’s pushing other companies to do the same through the “Waste to Wares” initiative led by the Manufacturers Association of Maine.

With $23,000 in funding from the Maine Technology Institute and $4,000 from Allagash, the effort set out to assess where manufacturing waste that would otherwise end up in landfills could be recycled or repurposed. More than 20 manufacturers in sectors from electronics to boatbuilding participated in a feasibility study completed in November.

Besides Allagash and industry peers Bissell Brothers, Geary’s and Rising Tide, participants included Auburn Manufacturing Co., of Mechanic Falls; Sabre Yachts, of Raymond; and Sterling Rope Co., of Biddeford.

Carolyn Brodsky, president and founder of Biddeford-based Sterling Rope, says her company participated “because it makes me crazy that some of our stuff goes into landfill.” While the company has always recycled paper and reused or recycled cardboard, Brodsky says she was hoping to find a home for “oddball stuff,” like polyethylene steam tubes.

“We can only use them once, and to recycle them, we would have to grind up,” she explains. “The last time I inquired about that, the machine to do this was $5,000. It’s not what we do, so we didn’t invest. I have wondered whether these tubes, because they are perforated, and some of our waste core yarns couldn’t be used by the aquaculture industry to seed mussels.”

Outside the Waste to Wares program, Allagash has had a similar experience with Walpole-based Maine Shellfish Developers LLC, which is using leftover waste yeast from the brewing process to grow algae to feed oysters.

Luke Truman, Allagash’s facilities manager, says Waste to Wares offers the possibility for more cross-industry partnerships like that, saying: “There is a ton of opportunity for waste reuse from Maine’s manufacturing community — it’s just a matter of connecting the dots.” He says the inspiration for Waste to Wares originated with Celeste Bard of Portland consultancy Arcadia Designworks, who was running a garbage-to-art program for children, and Jeff Edelstein of the Greater Portland Sustainability Council. Allagash then enlisted the Manufacturers Association of Maine, which took the idea forward with funding help from Allagash and MTI for Waste to Wares.

Next steps

MTI President Brian Whitney told Mainebiz that his organization funded the project “to better understand the recycling and reuse potential of certain waste streams from Maine manufacturers, and to ultimately provide meaningful economic and environmental impacts in our state.”

He added: “We were encouraged by the feasibility study results and look forward to reviewing an implementation proposal from them in the future.”

Lisa Martin, executive director of the Manufacturers Association of Maine, says that interest in the initiative was much higher than expected, and that four areas of development are slated for the next phase.

She says it’s too early to give details, “except that there is a clear path to assistance and development of assistance and development of this direct service for manufacturers.”

The Environmental Technology and Energy Council of Maine, also known as E2Tech, is equally keen to get more companies involved in Waste to Wares, for which it is providing education and outreach.

“We want to seek more companies to participate in the process, and once we have some documented successes, get the word out to more potential participants,” said E2Tech’s executive director, Marty Grohman. “I’m very passionate about sustainability, yes, but also the savings and improved marketing messaging that companies who participate are going to benefit from.”