AUBURN – As the head of an electronics recycling company, Rick Dumas hates to see anything go to waste.

That includes his company’s money.

So when Dumas and his Brunswick-based eWaste Recycling Solutions began to look for a new home, they found a location on the Auburn/Poland line that had some major advantages:

• A 10,000-square-foot warehouse that doubles the space eWaste now has where it collects, disassembles and consolidates electronic components for recycling.

• An upgraded capacity that will allow it to handle 500,000 pounds of e-waste per month versus its current load of 60,000 pounds.

• Direct access to the St. Lawrence & Atlantic rail line that takes their recycled materials to Western ports a lot cheaper than overland by truck.

“The rail was a significant reason we picked this location,” said Dumas. The facility is the former Morse Bros. mulch plant off Hardscrabble Road, now owned by Commercial Paving and Recycling, which will share the site with eWaste.

To compare, Dumas refers to an example from EWS-New England, the forerunner of eWaste Recycling Solutions, which he managed. There, the cost to truck a standard 40-foot container of recyclable material from Brunswick to a rail line in Worcester, Mass., was $750. To take the same container and ship it by rail from Worcester to a West Coast port was $650.

“Moving to Auburn all but eliminates that (link to Worcester),” Dumas said. He expects to use the St. Lawrence and Atlantic to move his materials to Montreal and then to the port of Vancouver via the Canadian Pacific.

The final destination for many of the recyclables extracted from discarded TVs, computers, DVDs and more is Asia. Dumas said much of the leaded glass retrieved by eWaste ends up going to Samsung-Corning in Singapore, “where it’s turned into the next television set you buy.”

Maine is a pioneer in the recycling of electronics, propelled by the Household Television and Computer Monitor Recycling Law passed in 2006 that requires electronics manufacturers to help pay for the recycling of their components. Dumas said eWaste Recycling Solutions takes care of all the paperwork for the municipalities, businesses and organizations that use its services. The facility will be licensed to process 3,000 tons of e-waste annually.

The company also offers data destruction services, shredding computer hard drives so no personal information can be retrieved from them.

“You wouldn’t believe what some people are throwing out when they toss a computer,” he said. “Tax returns, banking information, and they just threw it in the trash.”

Dumas said it’s exciting to be in the e-waste recycling business, for its business potential, as well as the environmental benefit. eWaste Recycling Solutions is the offspring of EWS-New England and RMG Enterprise of Londonderry, N.H., where the electronics are sorted and crushed. Together, the companies took 8 million pounds of cathode ray tubes out of the waste stream and put them into new uses, Dumas said.

He hopes to do the same thing with the hard plastic shells that contain the guts of computers and TVs, perhaps finding new use for the plastics in some of the composite industries that are under consideration at the former Brunswick Naval Air Station.

Dumas said if all goes according to plan, eWaste should be in its new home with its eight employees this month. He expects business will take off soon thereafter, and is considering doubling the work force within a year to 18 months. But first he needs to wedge in the move between his daily work duties.

“It’s spring cleaning time,” he said, with a laugh. “We’re trying to keep our heads above the water, we’re just so busy.”