(Saint-Damien-de-Buckland) The Les Choux Gras cooperative reuses cardboard boxes from the coach manufacturer Prevost to enrich the soil in its fields and protect its crops from weeds. More than a ton of cardboard was recovered and diverted from recycling this year. And that’s just one of the many residual materials that this co-op in the Bellechasse region makes… its puffs.
Posted at 6:00 a.m.
“In conventional agriculture as in organic agriculture, they would be happy to have cabbages like that,” says market gardener Théo Germond Trudeau, proudly raising the green canvas that shelters the coop’s cabbage plot. “They are going to be big and there has been no insect attack. The yield will be there. »
The crucifers are so close together that you can no longer see the ground covered with cardboard, through which they were planted.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
Théo Germond Trudeau, market gardener at the Les Choux Gras cooperative
“The cardboard allows us to plant tighter since we don’t have to weed,” explains Mr. Germond Trudeau. The cardboard forming a barrier that the weeds cannot pierce, there is no need to leave passage between the rows to go weed.
The cultivable area is therefore used to the maximum and the work is reduced to a minimum.
“We plant and we harvest”, sums up the market gardener.
As for the cardboard, it will decompose on the spot, enriching the soil with carbon. The coop also uses it to develop new plots. Placed under a tarpaulin in the summer and exposed to the weather in the winter, the cardboard overcomes the lawn, preparing the ground for the following year.
Agreement with Prevost Car
Until last year, the supply depended on the members, who collected small boxes here and there.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
Caroline Lévesque, general manager of the Les Choux Gras cooperative
“It was so appreciated! But to enlarge the gardens, it was slower than with the box we had access to this year through Prevost Car,” explains the general manager of the coop, Caroline Lévesque.
At the Prevost factory in Sainte-Claire, about 20 minutes away, the seats intended for coaches and motorhomes arrive protected by very large, brand new flat cardboard boxes.
“We wondered if there was a more ecological way to dispose of it. We therefore looked in the region for how it could be reused, better valued than by sending it to who knows where as recycling,” says Bernard Juneau, plant manager and head of the environmental program at Prevost.
Synergie Bellechasse-Etchemins put him in touch with Les Choux Gras.
We want to make the circular economy and we want our residual materials to become a raw material for others. I’d much rather help a small local organization than a big recycler.
Bernard Juneau, plant manager and head of the environmental program at Prevost
Prevost must in fact pay $242 per container of mixed paper and cardboard sent for recycling. The 1100 kg of cardboard donated to Les Choux Gras this year has therefore reduced the bill. “We would like them to take all our cardboard, but we have too much,” says Mr. Juneau.
“There is a lot of material and material that we could reuse, but the problem is transportation: we don’t have the capacity to invest in a truck to be able to transport everything,” explains Ms.me Levesque.
For example, the coop would like to recover waste material from one of the members, who produces mushrooms in cultivation blocks filled with sawdust and cereals. She incorporated some of this mixture into the soil of her tomato plants grown in the greenhouse, but could not get more because she had no means of transport.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
Théo Germond Trudeau shows plants at the foot of which the coop has spread grass clippings and shredded branches.
Other materials are fortunately brought to him, such as the grass cut in the vicinity by the municipality, part of which is found at the foot of turnip and turnip plants. The pruning company Arboriculture de Beauce also delivered branches crushed into shavings, which the coop uses as mulch. And last year, she had asked her members to bring dead leaves to spread them in the fields.
All these residues contribute to “taking care of the earth”, a central principle of the permaculture practiced by Les Choux Gras.
“People tend to ‘clean’ their garden and leave the ground bare in the winter because to them it’s clean and ready for spring. But it goes against what nature would like, because it’s like an open wound, ”illustrates Mme Levesque.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
Théo Germond Trudeau at work
A second life
Residual materials are not the only ones to experience a new life here.
The 5.5 hectares cultivated and developed by Les Choux Gras were previously operated by the Notre-Dame-du-Perpétuel-Secours congregation, whose former convent can be seen below.
The vision of the coop, which also provides training and consulting in permaculture in the south of Bellechasse, convinced the sisters to sell their land to it in 2018. They even made a donation of $40,000 to help the development of a feeder park in a vast uncultivated field located on the other side of the stream.
PHOTO EDOUARD PLANTE-FRÉCHETTE, THE PRESS
Caroline Lévesque, general manager of the Les Choux Gras cooperative, in the abandoned orchard on the property, which the coop has undertaken to revitalize
This park, open to the public, will allow you to see concrete examples of permaculture. The project, which will be the subject of a crowdfunding campaign next spring, will include fruit trees and shrubs, nut trees, perennial vegetables such as asparagus and sorrel, mushrooms and medicinal plants, but also benches and artistic spaces.