Who we are
Our website address is: https://www.ecomaine.org.
What personal data we collect and why we collect it
At certain points during your visit to the website, you may be asked to provide information about yourself, or given the option to provide certain information. The active collection points on our website include:
- When a user subscribes to a newsletter
- When a user fills out a contact form on the site, including job or credit applications
- When a user downloads the Recyclopedia app
- When a vendor completes information about an RFP or takes ecomaine’s safety quiz
The information requested may include your contact information, such as email address, name, phone number, and/or company. You have the choice about whether to disclose the information necessary to use these features.
Comments
When visitors leave comments on the site we collect the data shown in the comments form, and also the visitor’s IP address and browser user agent string to help spam detection.
An anonymized string created from your email address (also called a hash) may be provided to the Gravatar service to see if you are using it. The Gravatar service privacy policy is available here: https://automattic.com/privacy/. After approval of your comment, your profile picture is visible to the public in the context of your comment.
Media
If you upload images to the website, you should avoid uploading images with embedded location data (EXIF GPS) included. Visitors to the website can download and extract any location data from images on the website.
Contact Forms & Personally Identifiable Information
“Personally identifiable information” is information about a person that is readily identifiable to that specific individual. It includes, for example, an individual’s name, street address, e-mail address, or phone number.
Personally identifiable information will not be collected unless you voluntarily send an e-mail message, fill out and send an online form, download an app, or fill out personal information and send in a survey. Your choice not to participate in these activities will not impair your ability to access certain information or obtain a service online.
Unless specifically protected under state law, any information provided may be inspected by the public or disclosed in a legal proceeding.
Cookies
If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.
If you visit our login page, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.
When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select “Remember Me”, your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.
If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.
Embedded content from other websites
Articles on this site may include embedded content (e.g. videos, images, articles, etc.). Embedded content from other websites behaves in the exact same way as if the visitor has visited the other website.
These websites may collect data about you, use cookies, embed additional third-party tracking, and monitor your interaction with that embedded content, including tracking your interaction with the embedded content if you have an account and are logged in to that website.
Analytics
Who we share your data with
The information we collect is used to improve the content of our web services and help us understand how people are using our services. We analyze our website logs to continually improve the value of the materials available on our site. The information in our website logs is not personally identifiable, and we make no attempt to link it with the individuals that browse our website.
Some of this statistical information, such as a running count of the number of visitors, may be shared with ecomaine staff, Board, member municipalities, or others to aid in the provision of better service to the public.
Web Beacons
The website may contain electronic images known as Web Beacons (sometimes called single-pixel gifs) that allow us to count users who have visited certain web pages. Web Beacons are not used to access your personally identifiable information; they are a technique we use to compile aggregated statistics about usage of our Website. Web Beacons collect only a limited set of information including a cookie number, time and date of a page view, and a description of the page on which the Web Beacon resides.
How long we retain your data
If you leave a comment, the comment and its metadata are retained indefinitely. This is so we can recognize and approve any follow-up comments automatically instead of holding them in a moderation queue.
For users that register on our website (if any), we also store the personal information they provide in their user profile. All users can see, edit, or delete their personal information at any time (except they cannot change their username). Website administrators can also see and edit that information.
What rights you have over your data
If you have an account on this site, or have left comments, you can request to receive an exported file of the personal data we hold about you, including any data you have provided to us. You can also request that we erase any personal data we hold about you. This does not include any data we are obliged to keep for administrative, legal, or security purposes.
Where we send your data
Visitor comments may be checked through an automated spam detection service.