Composting - an organic solution to a human problem

This is a video report prepared by Paul Malcolm and me about institutional, community and household composting programs in Montreal. It doesn’t deal directly with climate change, but does touch on the mantra for our times – sustainable development.

It’s easy to declare the need to strike a balance between a healthy economy, a clean environment and a just society.

But how do we do that?

Even one of these three feats on it own is impressive. The problem of climate change adds a blindfold and couple of spins to the already tough balancing act.

After the piece was produced, I was able to confirm through Darren Becker, press agent for the Mayor of Montreal and the Executive Committee, that a waste management “master plan” – including composting - for the island of Montreal will be announced sometime this spring.

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Originally this story was going to be about recycling, but none of the sorting plants would let us film their operations so we gave that up. One of the things I learned along the way is that reduction, the first of the three Rs, has largely been a failure here in Quebec. As time goes by and the economy grows so does the amount of waste we produce.

A Recyc-Quebec audit done three years ago suggests that 2004 was the first year that waste was reduced at the source. (This is the 2004 audit in PDF format.)

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I think the highlight of doing this package was interviewing/hanging out with the home composters as they picked through their compost after work on a Friday afternoon. They weren’t strident advocates, they were just doing their part, separating the worms from the manure.

In spite of the odd smug comment about token environmental acts, I admire those acting on the conviction that things can be done better.