The City of Montreal may have no choice but to maintain its contracts with the recycling giant Ricova, accused by the Office of Inspector General (BIG) of having monopolized several million that should have returned to municipal coffers. .
Posted yesterday at 4:53 p.m.
According to Arnaud Budka, Director of Residual Materials Management for the City of Montreal, “it is highly unlikely that we will be able to award a new contract” for recycling management.
During a presentation made Tuesday to the members of the municipal council, Mr. Budka added that several options were on the table, in particular that the City operates itself, with its own employees, the two sorting centers for recyclable materials, in the borough of Lachine and in the Saint-Michel district.
Continuation of services
Regardless of the solution that will be chosen, the main concern of the City is to ensure that services are maintained, also underlined the mayor, Valérie Plante.
“What is happening is unacceptable,” said Mr.me Plant. And we are going to act as we have always done so that the company is punished for the actions taken, but also to ensure that we do not have any [rupture] services,” including for the collection of recyclable materials in the boroughs served by Ricova.
In a devastating report published on Monday, the BIG recommended that the City terminate “as soon as possible” its contracts with Ricova, which holds the virtual monopoly of recycling in Montreal.
But it could be difficult to go back to tender to find a new supplier, noted Arnaud Budka, since it would be a very short-term contract. This is because from 2025, packaging producers will have to assume the costs of collecting and sorting recyclable materials themselves, which will no longer be managed by the municipalities.
High contamination
During his presentation, Mr. Budka unveiled data on the quality of materials leaving Montreal sorting centers, which show high contamination with other products.
Thus, for paper, contamination reached 25% in recent months. Corrugated cardboard was 16% contaminated at the Saint-Michel sorting center and 3.5% at the Lachine sorting center, while mixed plastics were 19% contaminated at Saint-Michel and 6% at Lachine.
Fearing that Montrealers would lose confidence in their recycling system, the opposition at City Hall demanded an action plan from the Plante administration to tackle the crisis in sorting centers.
“There is a complete mess about sorting centers, and that risks discouraging Montrealers from recycling,” opposition leader Aref Salem denounced on Tuesday during the city council meeting.
“In the space of four years, Montrealers have learned that nearly $35 million has been spent on a failed business and a dysfunctional new sorting center, that their waste is being sent overseas, that they have lost more than $1 million in royalties and that the City is doing business with a company against which there have been several reports of conflict of interest. »
The opposition accuses Mayor Valérie Plante’s team of lack of vigilance and lack of transparency in this file. The administration should have realized Ricova’s maneuvers before the BIG investigated the matter, according to elected officials from the Ensemble Montréal party.