The Official Opposition at Montreal City Hall is urging Valérie Plante’s administration to show more “transparency” regarding the poor quality of the mixed paper bales leaving the city’s sorting centers and to hold a plenary session to tackle this issue.
The recycling crisis, which caused a stir in the metropolis after China’s decision at the end of 2017 to close its borders to poor quality materials leaving sorting centers, again caught the eye last week. latest following a report from the show Investigation, at Radio Canada. This prompted the Ensemble Montréal party to hold a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday to challenge the City in this matter.
“Without the excellent investigative work of journalists, the so-called pro-environment administration [de Valérie Plante] would have continued to tell Montrealers that there is no recycling crisis”, then lamented the leader of the party, Aref Salem, who described the management of this file by the City as “very opaque”.
Dubbed “The Dirty Secrets of Recycling”, the report from the show Investigation mentions in particular many bales of mixed paper which had been purchased at the Saint-Michel sorting center with the aim of being transported there to India, where they would be used in particular as a combustion element in highly polluting factories. Several of these bundles were nevertheless intercepted in Belgium and returned to Canada because of their high contamination rate, which would have reached approximately 25%, or 8 times more than the North American standards, providing for a contamination rate of 3%.
The report also shows that the Lachine sorting center, although inaugurated with great fanfare in 2019, is also a poor figure with a contamination rate of its mixed paper bales which would fluctuate around 20%.
“It’s just shameful,” Mr. Salem said. The latter also recalled that Mayor Valérie Plante had promised, at the time of the inauguration of this sorting center, “that there would be continuous improvement” with the aim of making the materials leaving these facilities “the cleanest and most interesting” possible for potential local buyers wishing to reuse them.
“Not only is the administration’s way of managing recycling problematic, but its transparency is just as problematic,” added Mr. Salem, who also recalled that the City receives monthly reports from Ricova regarding the performance of the sorting centers in Saint-Michel and Lachine, both of which it is responsible for. A consulting firm has been investigating for several months the operation of this company on behalf of the City, revealed The Press Monday.
“A game plan” requested
In a motion to be debated at the next meeting of the municipal council, on February 21, the party thus intends to demand the holding of a plenary session of the City’s Environmental Department with the aim of developing “a match” which will improve “the performance of Montreal sorting centres. The City has also spent tens of millions of dollars in recent years, in particular to support the former operator of its sorting centers, Rebuts Solides Canadiens, as well as to allow the development of the Lachine sorting center.
The City is responsible […] She has to find a solution for Montrealers, who think that we are recycling 100%, “while some of these materials end up in India or even buried, raised Mr. Salem. “What message are we sending in terms of ecological transition? “, he questioned.
The document, presented by Mr. Salem and supported by other elected officials from Ensemble Montréal, also urges the City to make public the reports it receives on a monthly basis from Ricova to facilitate the understanding of the real state of the situation in the sorting centers managed by it. Finally, the motion calls on the City to establish clear targets and a timetable to reduce the rate of contamination of the bales of paper leaving its sorting centres.
“The environment should not just be a brand image for this party”, launched Tuesday the councilor of Ensemble Montreal in the district of Darlington, Stéphanie Valenzuela, in reference to the training of Valérie Plante, Project Montreal.
Mr. Salem, however, did not go so far as to demand the withdrawal of the elected representative of Projet Montréal Marie-Andrée Mauger from the position of environmental manager that she occupies on the executive committee. “I don’t want to personalize this debate,” he said, adding that “it’s the whole administration [de Mme Plante] who is at fault in this case”.
At the time these lines were written, the firm of Mr.me Plante had not reacted.