ABOUT
DON'T WASTE  ME

Don't Waste ME formed over ten years ago through  shared concerns and in advocating to fight landfills and incinerators in our communities. We have been meeting together as a group for about five years, exploring how we can take action together to help keep the space that is now called Maine clean. In the fall of 2019 we formalized our group, electing officers: Bill Lippincott, as the Chair of Don't Waste ME; Ed Spencer is Vice-Chair and Hillary Lister as Secretary.​

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The goal of our project is to educate Maine citizens, increasing awareness and support for changing the current waste management policy that allows for Maine to become a dumping ground for the Northeast. Maine has been allowing the importing out of state waste to our state-owned Juniper Ridge Landfill (JRL) in Old Town, which is supposed to be reserved for state generated waste. This is an issue of environmental injustice, as landfill leachate is discharged into the Penobscot River, the historic cultural and spiritual homeland of the Penobscot Nation, after being minimally treated and tested for harmful chemicals. The health of the river and land is critical to all of us. Another waste processing facility in Lewiston imports 200,000 tons a year of construction/demolition waste from Massachusetts, sending 90% of these materials to JRL, filling Maine landfill capacity and creating toxic leachate that is dumped into the Penobscot River.

 

To accomplish project goals, we seek funding to continue digital organizing. Funding will also be used to educate and mobilize grassroot support through a short educational film about environmental threats caused by importing thousands of tons of out of state waste to the landfill. Our partner and long-time ally, the Sunlight Media Collective, is a grassroots media collective made up of indigenous and non-indigenous journalists and activists.