Recycling in Montreal: by-laws, waste & worms

By Nick Say

Carolle Clément, Éco-quartier coordinator for Villeray, feels that the only way to get Montreal residents and businesses to really recycle is to introduce a law punishing those who refuse to dispose of their waste ecologically.

“Recycling has to be made obligatory. There should be a clear law that people are forced to obey,” says the head of the Éco-quartier for the north Montreal neighborhood.

Clément, 58, wants the City of Montreal to institute a by-law that will fine Montrealers who choose not to place their recyclable waste in the green boxes that are a symbol of Quebec’s largest city.

While the Éco-quartier coordinator has seen an increasing interest in recycling from the residents of her neighborhood in the last few years, she feels that it’s reached a plateau. Clément believes that firmer action is required: “If you don’t force people to recycle, they’ll stop doing it,” she says.

Clément reserves a particular ire for local businesses, pointing out that they are more relcacitrant when it comes to recycling than residents. She says that Tim Hortons coffee shops and Couche Tard dépanneurs in Villeray don’t bother to recycle. Clément also indicates that she’s had difficulty persuading the many independent restaurants on St. Hubert St. to adopt a greener approach to their garbage.

Clément emphasizes that it’s vital for businesses, especially restaurants, to recycle. She points out that they produce far greater quantities of waste than residents.

The coordinator of the Éco-quartier for Villeray has started a campaign urging Montrealers in the neighborhood to boycott businesses who don’t recycle. She feels that this is unlikely to be entirely successful, and that only a by-law will have the required effect.

Clément’s views may appear radical, but a by-law on recycling is something the City of Montreal is considering.

“Implementing a by-law to punish those who don’t recycle is definitely something we’re looking into,” says Alan DeSousa, City of Montreal Executive Committee Member for Sustainable Development.

DeSousa points out, however, that a by-law on recycling can’t be introduced at the moment: “Not everyone on the island of Montreal has access to recycling facilities. We could only have a recycling by-law if everyone was able to recycle,” he says.

There are still over 7,000 homes in Montreal that aren’t served by recycling services, according to DeSousa. He says that by the end of the year, the City intends to provide every Montrealer with the means to recycle. DeSousa, who is also the mayor of St. Laurent, notes that his borough recently achieved its goal of providing the service to all residents.

DeSousa feels that once the whole city is served, the City will be able to start introducing stronger measures to encourage Montrealers to recycle. He admits that there is a real need to increase recycling on the island. The Quebec government’s Quebec Residual Materials Management Policy (1998-2008) set Montreal the target of recycling 60 per cent of its waste. The City’s most recent statistics (for 2004) show that only 34 per cent of Montreal’s garbage is being recycled.

If more of Montreal’s waste were recycled it would have an impact on greenhouse gas emissions. The recycling of paper results in less trees being cut down. Growing trees act as carbon sinks, absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for photosynthesis.

Waste sent to Montreal landfills produces the greenhouse gas methane as the garbage decomposes. Methane is not emitted by the decomposition of materials like paper and aluminuium that can be recycled by the City’s services. The greenhouse gas 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide is produced by the decay of organic waste – essentially discarded food scraps.

Food scraps can be recycled through composting. While the City of Montreal is yet to start a door-to-door service to pick-up food waste for composting, a number of groups are encouraging Montrealers to stop throwing their unused scraps into the garbage.

Members of McGill University’s Gorilla Compost turn their wasted food into organic fertilizer. Members pay $5 to join and can then drop their food scraps in buckets behind Gorilla Compost’s office on University Street. The waste, along with scraps from the university’s cafeterias, is transferred to a holding container, which is then transported to Quinn Farms on Ile-Perrot. When the waste has decomposed, the farm has organic fertilizer.

Gorilla Compost spokesperson Julia Winters says the organization has grown in popularity since its inception in 2004. Winters reveals that the group now has over 200 members.

The organization has an ecological foundation: “We wanted to decrease the negative environmental impact we have here,” says Winters.

The 20-year-old student reveals admits, however, that the Gorilla Compost operation is not completely environmentally-friendly: “The climate change motivation is debatable, considering we’re trucking the compost to Ile Perrot,” says Winters of the carbon dioxide emitted driving the organic waste to Quinn Farms.

Even if the compost process took place on McGill’s campus, the quantities of methane produced by the decomposing waste would be the same as if it was left to rot in a landfill site. The only way to compost and reduce emissions of the greenhouse gas is by using a vermicompost – composting with the aid of ‘red wiggler’ worms (Eisenia foetida). The worms are able to consume their weight in organic matter each day.

Santropol Roulant, an organization that provides meals-on-wheels for seniors, uses vermicomposting to turn their kitchen’s food scraps into fertilizer for their rooftop garden. The group’s worm compost is in the basement of their St. Urbain St. headquarters. Three large green barrels contain hundreds of ‘red wigglers’, all working away to devour the vegetable scraps produced by the kitchen upstairs. Surprisingly, there is no smell.

“If there’s a smell, then you’re doing something wrong,” says Tim Murphy, Sanropol Roulant’s PR representative.

Murphy reveals that their vermicompost, set up in April 2006, was prompted by the group’s environmental concerns: “It was all about creating a closed food-cycle,” he says.

The group’s vermicompost not only reduces the methane emissions produced by Santropol Roulant’s kitchen waste, it also helps the organization grow their own vegetables in their Henri-Julien St. rooftop garden. The garden provides about a third of the organization’s vegetables in summer.

Murphy points out that anyone can set up their own vermicompost. “It’s really fairly simple stuff,” he says.

Santropol Roulant held a vermicompost workshop open to the public last autumn. While Gorilla Composting may not be directly involved in worm composting, they too carried out a presentation on this method of decreasing your waste. Vermicompost kits, bought from the Pousse Menu farm, were also sold at the McGill group’s workshop last October.

It’s not only private enterprises like Pousse Menu that are selling worm-composting equipment. Villeray’s Éco-quartier coordinator Carole Clément also sells the kits. She emphasizes that as her worm-composting boxes and ‘red wigglers’ are subsidized by the City of Montreal, they are cheaper than those sold by organic farms like Pousse Menu. Clément says the kits can be bought from many of the city’s Éco-quartiers.

She has noticed that interest in vermicomposting is rising: “I’m getting more and more orders for the kits,” says Clément, who worm composts herself.

While Clément is impressed by Montrealers' efforts to recycle their organic waste, she doesn't see a complete solution to the city's garbage problem in recycling - whether it involves 'red wiggler' worms or green boxes: "The best thing is not to produce so much waste. We have a consumption problem in our society," she says.

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