A year after banning single-use plastic in restaurants and food stores, the City of Montreal estimates that a large majority of establishments have adopted more ecological containers.
A year ago, the City’s new by-law banning glasses, stirring sticks, straws and plastic utensils as well as polystyrene products, such as plates and trays, came into force.
Twelve months later, the City maintains that 92% of the 9,000 establishments inspected complied with the regulations. Some 830 infringement notices were distributed and, following a second inspection, 39 tickets were issued. “This means that, over the past year, there has been less and less waste sent to landfill. It’s a major tour de force,” Valérie Plante said on Monday.
According to the mayor, certain large brands, which she did not want to name, were slow to comply with the new regulations, but they ultimately gave up plastic and polystyrene containers, she said.
The City is aiming for zero waste by 2030, which would divert 85% of residual materials from landfills. Reduction at source is all the more important as landfill sites in the Montreal region should be full by 2029, reported the person responsible for ecological transition and the environment to the executive committee, Marie- Andrée Mauger. “We still have a lot of hard work to do to get there. »
The city’s regulations also aimed to make the city cleaner. “We characterized our street and park trash bins a few years ago and we saw that three quarters [des déchets] which end up in these public trash cans are linked to single-use items,” argued Mme Mauger.
Other municipalities, such as Laval, Mascouche, Terrebonne and Prévost, have followed in the footsteps of the City of Montreal and adopted similar regulations.
Montreal should now put pressure on the Quebec government so that it adopts a standardized strategy on the ban on certain plastics, believes Karel Ménard, general director of the Quebec Common Front for Ecological Waste Management. “We must avoid a patchwork of regulations with particularities specific to each locality,” he says.
And as the only landfill site in the territory of the Metropolitan Community of Montreal, that of Terrebonne, will soon reach its maximum authorized capacity, the City would benefit from finding a plan B, he says.
For the moment, Montreal does not know what the next measures will be to put in place to reduce waste at the source. “We have our residual materials management plan until 2025. We are going to go to public consultation for the 2026-2030 plan. We are going to take stock of the situation to see what other major actions we must take to successfully reduce what we send to landfill in order to achieve our objective of moving towards zero waste in 2030.” , explained Marie-Andrée Mauger.