UMaine waste study cited in BDN report on York’s plastic bag ban
A 2011 waste characterization study by the University of Maine School of Economics was cited in the Bangor Daily News article, “Will York’s plastic bag ban actually help the environment?” The study found that plastic bags were the sixth most common plastic thrown away in Maine, accounting for about 0.82 percent of landfill waste by weight, according to the article. “Plastic bags aren’t going anywhere. If you dig up a landfill hundreds of years from now, they’ll still be there,” said Travis Blackmer, a research associate at UMaine’s Senator George J. Mitchell Center for Sustainability Solutions and one of the authors of the study.