Travis Blackmer: Finding educational gold in heaps of trash

February 22, 2016 Alumni, Alumni profiles, Signature and Emerging Areas, Sustainability Solutions and Technologies

For Travis Blackmer, the summer of 2011 was a summer of garbage. And it changed his life.

While classmates at the University of Maine were waiting tables, pounding nails, or painting houses to make tuition money, the 20-year old undergrad was pawing through trash. Tons and tons of trash.

But he didn’t really mind. After all, he was getting paid well, or let’s just say it was quite a bit more than minimum wage. “For a 20-year-old with no degree, I was pretty happy. I didn’t have any better summer job offers,” said Blackmer.

These days Blackmer is still working on trash issues as a part of a long-range effort supported by UMaine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions to help craft a total makeover of the state’s materials management system, as the solid waste disposal system is now known.

Read the full profile on the Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions website.