BioEnergy Hawaii LLC, a waste disposal company, filed an environmental notice with Hawaii County on Tuesday as it seeks to build a waste-to-energy facility on the Big Island.

The company, based in Kailua-Kona, said it plans to lease approximately 15 acres of land in South Kohala to build and operate a resource recovery facility where municipal solid waste from Hawaii County landfills will be redirected. BioEnergy Hawaii Vice President Clint Knox said the company hopes to begin construction in the third quarter of 2017.

The filing opened a 30-day public comment period that lasts until Sept. 22.

Knox said the plant will separate material before converting the waste to energy.

“It’s harder for the upfront because there is a lot more material handling. You really have to separate and pick out everything,” he said.

The waste-to-energy plant would separate recyclables, plastics and metals as well as organic waste before creating the biogas from the organic materials.

“We take out recyclables first,” Knox said. “We take out high-value plastics and metals and glass and get that out of the waste stream first. We take those different streams that are separated to go into their respective technologies.”

Through a process called anaerobic digestion, organic waste is turned into biogas and soil products.

A portion of the biogas will be used to power the facility. The remaining biogas will be upgraded to renewable natural gas and sold as a pipeline-quality gas or compressed to produce a transportation fuel.

Knox said the facility is designed to be flexible in the amount of waste it accepts, and will be capable of accepting 200 to 500 tons of waste.

“It all depends on how much waste we get in and what types of waste,” Knox said.

Ulupono Initiative, a social investment firm co-founded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, partnered with BioEnergy Hawaii in 2015.

BioEnergy Hawaii also received a special-purpose revenue bond of $100 million from the state Legislature in 2016.