Cities dig road-side compost collection

BY ANDY BLATCHFORD

andy.blatchford@transcontinental.ca

Pointe Claire will be home to the Montreal’s first curbside compost collection once it kicks off a pilot project this May.

Officials hope the test run will lead to a city-wide pick up to help Pointe Claire meet a 2008 provincial target of 60-per-cent recycling for Quebec municipalities.

In 2004, Pointe Claire citizens recycled 19 per cent of their trash, according to city spokesperson Ginette Brisebois.

Large brown bins will be distributed to 200 Pointe Claire households selected at random. Residents will be asked to dump organic refuse in the 240-litre containers and wheel them to the road for pick-up, Brisebois said.

Surveys will be handed out with the bins, the city will compile results and release a report.

“We’re trying to have all kinds of houses (in the pilot project),” she said, adding that single-family and multi-family houses will be asked take part in the program.

The city passed a resolution authorizing a loan of up to $3.1 million to fund the initiative last month, she said.

If the pilot project is successful, Pointe Claire aims to issue up to 11,000 bins and expand collection throughout the city. If the project is accepted by council, containers will also be doled out to large apartment buildings and institutions, which will not be included in the test run, Brisebois said.

“We have to see the results and how it works,” she said, adding Pointe Claire and Montreal’s agglomeration council still have to find a treatment site for the compost. However, an environmental complex in the St. Michel district of Montreal is the likely destination, she added.

Agglomeration will foot the bill for

processing the compost, while Pointe Claire is responsible for collection and transportation, Brisebois said.

She is optimistic the project will be successful.“Traditionally, the people of Pointe Claire are recognized to be quite green and pro-environmental protection,” she said.

Montreal’s executive committee member responsible for sustainable development said the creation of an organic refuse treatment site is outlined in the island’s waste management plan.

“I’m glad that (Pointe Claire) is doing it,” Alan DeSousa said of the pilot project. “I think we’ll obviously learn from their experience, so to speak.”

However, he noted it will be difficult to use apply lessons learned from Pointe Claire, which has a population of 30,000, to the needs of Montreal.

George McCourt, a professor at McGill University’s School of Environment, said a third of all trash can be composted.

“You can compost and it requires no more effort than actually putting your garbage out,” he said. “Where the effort is, is that you do have to separate it out. But we’re doing that already with the blue (recycling) box.”

He said citizens can leave a small container under the kitchen sink for organic waste. “I do this at home and it’s not a big deal,” said McCourt, a Beaconsfield resident who works at McGill’s Macdonald Campus in Ste. Anne de Bellevue.

But to meet Quebec’s 60-per-cent recycling target next year, McCourt said Montreal would need to establish five industrial composting sites across the island, and soon.

His students have been conducting surveys and gathering data for the Ste. Anne environment committee to help the town develop its own curbside composting endeavour.

Ste. Anne Mayor Bill Tierney, who composts in his backyard, said the town is waiting for agglomeration to decide on large-scale dumping sites. The Bois de la Roche agricultural park in Senneville could by a future location for such an initiative, he said.

“The problem is disposal,” Tierney said. “We’ve got people who can pick it up, but it’s a question of where to take it and how it’s disposed of.”