One day after receiving reprimands from the Bureau d’audiences publiques sur l’environnement (BAPE), Quebec is tightening its waste recovery targets and giving itself five years to achieve them.
In a draft regulation published Wednesday in the Quebec Official Gazette, the Ministry of the Environment formalizes its intentions to shovel responsibility for collection out of producers’ backyards and sets itself specific objectives for the recovery and reclamation of recyclable materials. As recently as Tuesday, the BAPE slapped the fingers of the Quebec government for its inability to reduce landfilling.
In 2027, therefore, the bodies responsible for recovery will have to recycle 85% of cardboard products, 80% of rigid plastics and 70% of glass, in particular. They will also be required to be equipped to accept and recover polystyrene products.
The selective collection modernization project, which will be detailed on Wednesday morning by the Minister of the Environment, Benoit Charette, also aims to extend recycling to straws and plastic utensils, in 2029.
Organizations that do not comply with certain provisions of the regulations may be liable to fines and criminal penalties.
The deposit will go ahead
Quebec’s intentions do not stop there. In a second draft regulation published on Wednesday, the government of François Legault confirms its intentions to expand the deposit system from the end of the year. The reform, which has so far been the subject of more or less successful pilot projects, should make it possible to record glass bottles, milk cartons and other metal cans.
Minister Charette is giving the project ten months to materialize. Wine bottles will return 25 cents each to the consumer. Remaining containers will be subject to refunds of 10 cents per unit.
Producers, local or foreign, will have to bear the costs of the operation. Quebec has already given itself the tools to do so in a bill adopted last year in the National Assembly, which enshrined in law the extended responsibility of producers, from the beginning to the end of a product’s life.
Further details will follow.