Jumble in the tray | The Press

Like you, I have read and watched the reports on poor management affecting the recycling sector, those of my colleague Philippe Teiscera-Lessard and that of the program Investigation.

Sorting centers, mostly operated by private companies, are harshly criticized. We send glass, paper, cardboard, metal and plastic to these centers in bulk, with the result that the unusable percentage is considerable.

When I hear about the inefficiency of sorting centres, I always wonder when the chain breaks. I often come back to the same question: why have we stopped sorting at source?

Remember: at the beginning, we were asked to separate the materials in the bins. And these materials were collected and transported respecting this division.

Then, no doubt because we thought that more of us would take part in this social project, we were told to put all our recyclable waste in the same bin. And to save money, we also made the decision to stop selective transport and to dump everything in the dumpsters of the trucks.

I was thinking about this once again when I came across a very interesting text by Jean-Claude Thibault, spokesperson for Opération Verre-Vert, a citizen committee of Val-Saint-François, MRC of 32,000 inhabitants. This post, published in The galleryagrees with my thoughts in many respects.

Entitled “The big culprit, the pell-mell bin”, this text says that the “real culprit” of this impasse is the tote bin that we use. According to Jean-Claude Thibault, we are facing a “real disaster on the economic, ecological and social levels”.

Jean-Claude Thibault thinks that the first step to take (before the government really takes matters into their own hands) is to isolate the recovery of glass. But for that, we must provide citizens with a system that allows them to make this gesture.

This is also why Verre-Vert was born in 2014. After visiting sorting centres, the members of the collective understood that broken glass created serious problems at the sorting stage. “We had to invest huge sums in technologies to unravel what we are being asked to do at source,” says Jean-Claude Thibault.

Initially, seven containers were installed in Val-Saint-François. “Recyc-Québec told us that if we collected 200 tonnes of glass the first year, our project would be successful. Oh surprise! we reached 333 tons! »

The bottles and containers collected are transported directly (thanks to assistance from Recyc-Québec) to a company that conditions (by crushing) the glass. The next stage is that of the foundry.

You will have noticed that we skip the sorting center stage.

The upstream sorting debate is generating a real debate and dividing the voices of the recycling world. A study commissioned by Recyc-Québec in 2019 analyzed bales produced by 22 sorting centers in Quebec.

Only half of the centers agreed to share their results. In most cases, no glass contamination would have been detected in corrugated, mixed paper, newsprint or polyethylene terephthalate bales.

Sorting centers defend the idea that the bales they produce are not contaminated and that they can accommodate glass. The reason seems obvious. “If I have less glass to process, it will cost me more to operate and I will have less to sell,” said Nathalie Drapeau, general manager of the Grande-Rivière sorting center to the Radio-Canada journalist. Alexander Duval.

According to experts, the glass is itself contaminated with so-called infusible materials from materials such as ceramics or porcelain that people put in their bins.

One thing is certain, we agree on one thing: mixing materials complicates the work of sorting centers and in many cases reduces the quality of products intended for recycling.

“During the parliamentary committee on the recovery and recycling of glass, in 2019, we were told that the quality of the glass we offer is superior,” Jean-Claude Thibault told me.

According to him, about fifteen RCMs in Quebec encompassing approximately 150 municipalities have adopted a system for sorting glass at source. More than 7,000 tons of glass are recovered each year in Quebec.

Once again, these are small groups of citizens finding solutions to problems buried in bureaucracy, a lack of will, political games and entrepreneurs who have only one goal: to obtain greater profits. .

I say kudos to these citizens, and to the municipal governments that support them, who are creating parallel systems that improve a visibly deficient organization.

Now, when will there be a clear policy of “performance fees” to encourage municipalities to adopt such measures?

The extension of the deposit for beverage containers, which will extend to bottles of wine and spirits from the SAQ, will be a crucial step in the recovery and recycling of glass. Provided that rigorous sorting and transport methods are applied.

We are at the pilot project stage. It will be interesting to see the results that will emanate from this. For the moment, a certain reluctance or distrust is expressed.

Jean-Claude Thibault told me that he regularly hears people expressing their doubts about the success of the deposit with bottles from the SAQ.

“To those, I reply that we’ve been bringing our bottles of beer to the grocery store for 60 years. »

Will the wine drinker become a stickler like the beer drinker? I leave this other subject to the sociologists.