Montreal has recently had a new slogan: “French-speaking metropolis of the Americas”. But another slogan would suit it just as well: “Montreal, metropolis of garbage”…
A walk in the streets of the central districts will be enough to convince the most skeptical: ripped open garbage bags, chicken carcasses and other table scraps lying on the road, old socks with holes, greasy paper, handkerchiefs rolled up into a ball… Every day, the pedestrian is exposed to the contents of his contemporary’s garbage bag. And it’s far from being croquignolet, to use one of the favorite words of the Minister of Transport, Geneviève Guilbault.
To the garbage bags that line the sidewalks, we must add the mattresses, furniture and other small appliances that our neighbors abandon on the side of the street.
Why go to the ecocentre when you can throw everything in front of your house… it’s so much easier!
And what about cigarette butts, which would represent 30% of waste on the ground in Montreal.
Thursday, our colleague Isabelle Ducas reported in our pages1 the deplorable state of the streets surrounding McGill University: end-of-term students returning home are emptying their apartments and leaving most of their possessions on the sidewalk. The situation is repeated every year without the City having found a solution! This is not serious !
Remember that Quebecers are the dunces of waste management in the country with 716 kg of residual materials per capita in 2021, an increase of 5% compared to 2018.
We can say that Montreal is a beautiful showcase that highlights this very Quebec specificity. No wonder the author Claude Meunier decided to bring us back his character of Pôpa de The Little Life. We have an existential problem with our garbage.
Yet it is not the solutions that are lacking to discipline the population.
Starting with making households pay for the waste they produce. This idea, defended by many, including Professor Pierre-Olivier Pineau, is already applied in Beaconsfield as well as in several cities around the world.
A waste tax can take several forms: annual tax based on household size, tax based on the weight of waste produced or, as in some cities, distribution of X number of bin bags beyond which the other bags become paying. In all cases, low-income households benefit from an exemption or special measures.
This tax would have the effect of making individuals aware of their uncontrolled production of waste and forcing them to compost, recycle and… produce less waste.
Then there is the way we collect garbage in 2023 which no longer holds water.
As the general manager of the Montreal Centre-ville organization, Glenn Castanheira, once said, waste management in Montreal is worthy of the Middle Ages…
It is high time to make plastic garbage cans mandatory for all single-family homes and condos located on the ground floor.
Garbage depots should also be set up in neighborhoods to prevent garbage bags from appearing on the sidewalks several days before collection.
And to prevent garbage bags from piling up around these possible deposit sites, there are not 36,000 solutions: better surveillance is needed, accompanied by stiff fines, in order to discourage offenders.
Same approach with Montreal dog owners who have become worse than Parisians. Those who do not pick up their pooch’s feces deserve a hefty fine.
Finally, a little civility wouldn’t hurt anyone. If each of us maintained the little piece of sidewalk in front of his door, it would already be a giant step.
The Montreal Metropolitan Community (CMM), which brings together 82 municipalities, just completed its public consultation on waste management a month ago. A report must be filed by the end of the month and if Recyc-Québec gives the green light, the Metropolitan Residual Materials Management Plan (PMGMR) 2024-2031 will come into effect.
But the solutions contained in this plan are still very timid.
You have to have the courage to adopt the strong method if you don’t want Montreal to become “the capital of garbage bags”.