This text is taken from the Courrier de la Planète of August 23, 2022. To subscribe, click here.
Each year, the Quebec economy consumes 271 million tonnes of raw and secondary materials, or 32 tonnes per inhabitant. In other words, each Quebecer causes the annual use of resources whose mass is equivalent to that of five elephants!
To curb environmental degradation, it is essential to reduce this disproportionate consumption of resources. One way to do this is to put the economy on a diet so that fewer products and services are required at the end of the day. We can also promote the reuse of residues, that is to say bet on the circular economy.
The circular economy has been Pierre Racicot’s hobbyhorse for a decade. This sociologist, a specialist in the economy at the regional level in Quebec, is the CEO of Innovative Cities and Regions, a Quebec network that is trying to orchestrate a shift towards this type of less extractivist economy.
“People are ready for that. They see the climate emergency on TV every day and they ask themselves: “What can I do?” explained Mr. Racicot in an interview with The duty on the occasion of our compilation of 10 concrete ideas inspired by the findings of the IPCC for a Quebec government.
The Quebec economy is indeed very “linear”. The vast majority of agricultural, mining, industrial and domestic residues are not recycled. Burned hydrocarbons are inherently non-circular.
According to the first Report on the circularity index of the Quebec economy produced in 2021 at the request of Recyc-Québec, only 3.5% of the province’s economy is based on resources circulating in a loop. The province is well below the world average, which is 8.6%.
In many cases, the wasted material could be recovered. Consider in particular the millions of tonnes of waste buried each year in the province, made up of 65% organic matter that can enrich the soil.
Keep the money in the region
Small initiatives exist to promote the circular economy: aquaponics, the deconstruction of obsolete buildings, the agricultural recovery of municipal sludge. But according to Mr. Racicot, Quebec must absolutely adopt a strong policy to encourage the shift towards the circular economy.
More concretely, this could in particular result in the transfer of taxes levied on companies in the circular economy to the municipalities and regions where they operate. This money, then invested in local research centers, would create a ripple effect, according to Mr. Racicot.
“These environments would become more dynamic, and therefore more interesting for new circular economy operators,” he argues. The backbone of this regional network already exists, he adds: these are the 59 college centers for technology transfer, spread over 15 regions of Quebec.
The government must present the new version of its Government Sustainable Development Strategy by October 27. The inclusion of circular economy orientations in this strategy can “constitute a driver of innovation promoting a green recovery”, according to the Chair of Energy Sector Management at HEC Montréal.