Here are some highlights from this month’s news stories and opinion pieces related to the environment, including Maine’s air, land, water, and wildlife.
January 20, 2022
After two years of no municipal recycling program, Tremont, Maine, in Hancock County has selected a new recycling program for residents.
New Jersey’s governor has signed a new recycled content bill into law this week. “The law establishes recycled content requirements starting in 2024 for certain plastic, glass and paper packaging and bans polystyrene packing peanuts,” according to this article in Wastedive. The Maine Legislature will be discussing a bill carried over from the 2021 session that would increase recycled content in plastic bottles (LD 1467). Learn about this and other bills being discussed this legislative session.
Surprise! Ok, not really. We aren’t surprised to learn that Maine’s State Parks have set another attendance record in 2021. More than 3.3 million people visited our State Parks, beating the record set in 2020. Read more in the Bangor Daily News. Along with record visits to Maine State Parks, it appears that a record number of visitors are coming to Maine to hunt and fish during the pandemic, too.
Some great land conservation news this week: 15 projects conserving more than 50,000 acres were funded recently through the Maine Community Foundation’s Maine Land Protection grant program.
January 13, 2022
Sarah Sindo, a member of the NRCM Rising Leadership Team, wrote this article for the Bangor Daily News about her love of winter hiking!
NRCM and other groups reached a settlement with CMP to help get new solar projects hooked up to the Clean-energy advocates and other parties have reached a settlement with Central Maine Power aimed at easing long delays in hooking up solar projects to the grid. Now our hope is that the Public Utilities Commission will approve the settlement. Read more in the Portland Press Herald.
A recent Maine Public “Maine Calling” topic was green building practices in Maine and how those practices help fight climate change. Listen to the full episode.
This week, the Gulf of Maine Research Institute released a report that found that the Gulf of Maine, which we know is warming faster than almost all of the earth’s ocean areas, had its highest fall temperatures ever recorded — more than four degrees above average. Read more from Colin Woodard in the Portland Press Herald.
The Maine Beacon recently shared an opinion piece about the State wanting to hear from Mainers about what environmental justice means in Maine. The op-ed includes information about upcoming conversations and opportunities to get involved.
NRCM was happy to once again sponsor the Down East magazine reader photo contest. We selected one of the winners and thought all of this year’s photos were spectacular. Read more about the contest and view this year’s award-winning photos. Thank you, Down East!
And we will end this week’s News & Noteworthy with some news that has been getting a lot of people excited: a visit to Maine from a rare Steller’s Sea Eagle. There have been lots of posts, stories, photos, and videos from people who have seen this very large bird, with up to an eight-foot wing span!
January 6, 2022
Happy New Year! We are going to start off this week’s News & Noteworthy with the six sustainable packaging trends that Greenbiz.com will be watching in 2022, including Maine’s first-in-the-nation Extended Producer Responsibility for Packaging law.
Would it really be a News & Noteworthy without an update about our work to stop the Central Maine Power (CMP) corridor through western Maine? Here is this week’s update on the challenge by CMP’s parent company Avangrid to Maine’s new law that went into effect last month after Maine voters resoundingly opposed the corridor at the November ballot box.
A former mine in Brooksville, Maine, has been a Superfund site, with clean-up beginning more than a decade ago in 2010. The polluting mine was closed in 1972. Thanks to the federal infrastructure bill, it looks like this clean-up will get a big boost in funding!
