Montreal's recycling program is in a dire state, but there are solutions
CBC
As soon as Stephanie Valenzuela walked through the doors at Montreal's newest recycling centre in Lachine, she was greeted by the stink of garbage.
The environment critic for the opposition party Ensemble Montréal says she saw dirty diapers and discarded meat bones mixed among the cardboard, plastic and paper during a tour of the facility earlier this year.
The disarray confirmed a big problem for Valenzuela: Montreal's recycling program is in an "alarming" state and needs to change.
"If we don't do it now, I really believe that we're going to go into a cycle that we can't really get ourselves out of," said Valenzuela, a city councillor in Côte-des-Neiges–Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.
Ricova, which took over the sorting centre in 2020, has faced the brunt of the criticism for the contamination in material sorted for recycling at the plant, which makes it difficult to find a buyer.
Both of Montreal's recycling plants — in Lachine and Saint-Michel — have struggled with high contamination levels, making it difficult to get top dollar and to ultimately recycle the items.
CBC was not given access to the Lachine sorting plant.
According to a recent presentation to city council, the level of contamination in sorted paper bales has hovered around 25 per cent at the two centres, although that level was cut to 15 per cent at Saint-Michel in January.
The improvement is likely due to new equipment Ricova installed last November.
At the more modern Lachine plant, Ricova has blamed faulty sorting equipment and filed a $5.5-million lawsuit last year against the manufacturer to buy new machinery. That case is still before the courts.
But experts say the sorting centres will never be able to reach the desired standard, regardless of the company managing the site, if Quebec's approach to recycling doesn't get a major overhaul.
The contract for the $49-million Lachine plant was approved in 2017 under the administration of former mayor Denis Coderre.
When it opened in 2019, Valérie Plante, who became mayor the year before, billed it as a key part of her commitment to become a zero waste city by 2030.
"This will significantly improve the recycling of plastic and paper, which means that the quality, and therefore the value of the products will be improved," Plante said at the time.