The glass road project, which aims to recover as many containers as possible, is expanding with two containers installed in Bécancour and Galeries Nicolet, in the Centre-du-Québec region.
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A few minutes were enough between the opening of the collection point and the arrival of the first users.
“I picked them up to take them to Trois-Rivières, but there, it will be closer to home,” said Julie Courchesne, a citizen of Nicolet.
The popularity of these glass recovery containers is such that Groupe Bellemare, which is the instigator of the project, had to increase the number of times the company goes to empty them.
Those near the SAQ are particularly popular.
“We had planned monthly collections, in some places, we have to do it every week and even twice a week,” said company president Serge Bellemare.
He does not hide that his company, which recovers glass, has big plans.
“We are going to invest to increase the capacity of our processing plant to have the capacity to process up to 60% of the glass in Quebec,” he said.
The recovered glass is transformed into a swimming pool filtration product, but other outlets could emerge. In particular, it is a question of importing a technology from Europe that would make it possible to create insulation to be put under the asphalt, in order to avoid the impacts of freezing and thawing.
“Yes, recovering a glass bottle could possibly avoid potholes,” said the president.
Glass recovery is not the only environmental concern on the South Shore.
Many citizens are urging elected officials to move forward with measures to promote composting.
“The population is waiting for us to collect organic matter,” explained the mayor of Bécancour, Lucie Allard.
The Bécancour-Nicolet-Yamaska Integrated Waste Management Intermunicipal Board, the organization responsible for collecting residual materials, has not yet ruled on the implementation of the brown bin.
“When we collect brown bins, there are a lot of GHG emissions that are emitted for the small number of bins we pick up. We are not Montreal or Drummondville”, underlined Mario Lacroix, the general manager of the RIGIDBNY.
“We have to look at all the scenarios, you have to know that there are other technologies that mean that we could collect putrescible materials in the garbage cans and treat them in another way,” added the mayor of Nicolet, Genevieve Dubois.
The Régie, which had to make a decision towards the end of the summer as to how to implement composting, will do so before the winter due to the change of general manager.