Quebec is giving food SMEs a boost so that not only their products are good, but also their packaging is good for the environment.
The decision of the Legault government to modify the provisions of the Environment Quality Act which relate to deposit and selective collection imposes new obligations on all companies that sell products in a container or packaging.
However, such a change involves costs that SMEs will find it much more difficult to absorb than the big players in all areas.
18 million for SMEs
Hence the announcement, Tuesday, by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, André Lamontagne, of aid of 18 million intended for SMEs in the biofood sector to support their transition to eco-responsible packaging.
“The modernization that has been announced makes companies that market containers, packaging and printed matter responsible for taking into account the useful life of these products and their impact on the environment,” said the Minister, while he was at the head office of Maison Riviera, a dairy product processing SME, in Varennes in Montérégie.
“Ultimately, we made a product, we made a packaging, at some point it has an impact on the environment and you have to dispose of it, you have to give it another life, you have to recycle it. »
Food: 70% of all packaging
The decision to support the bio-food sector is no accident.
“In Quebec, approximately 70% of all packaging on the market comes from the food industry,” said Nicolas Girard, director general of the Quebec Action Fund for Sustainable Development (FAQDD). And of the 2,700 Quebec companies working in food processing, 40% have 10 or fewer employees.
These companies have the same supply chain, cybersecurity, automation and labor shortage issues as the bigger ones, but “need help to get into action and often that kick thumb is to have access to expertise”.
In the bio-food sector, this expertise is crucial to the development of new packaging, argued André Lamontagne, because beyond being recyclable, they must also ensure the safety and wholesomeness of food.
Worried contractors
The business support program, which will be managed by the FAQDD, has two components: the component per business, which plans to cover up to 75% of the required investments, for a maximum of $50,000, which comes into effect immediately , and a second component for collective initiatives that will support the efforts of associations and business groups. This business support component receives the lion’s share of the 18 million, or 16.5 million.
The rest of the grant, ie 1.5 million, will be entrusted to Inno-centre for innovation support. Its president and general manager, Claude Martel, said he spoke “to a few entrepreneurs last week who were a little worried, it must be said, but at the same time ready to collaborate”.
Certainly, the idea of forcing manufacturers, in this sector as in all others, to offer their products in recyclable packaging or containers is a laudable initiative from an environmental point of view. There are still, however, giant strides to be made so that downstream, the chain of selective collection, sorting and transformation for reuse here itself becomes efficient enough for us to truly be able to speak of a circular economy, after the environmental waste of sending badly sorted and too contaminated materials to other countries to be treated, which has made us exporters of mountains of waste.