A home-made documentary about one couple’s quest to live waste-free comes to Montreal on Monday at Concordia University’s de Sève Cinema, 1400 de Maisonneuve West, 7PM.  I hope to see you there!

Source: The Clean Bin Project

The Clean Bin Project is a feature documentary film about a regular couple and their quest to answer the question “is it possible to live completely waste free?”.  Partners Jen and Grant go head to head in a competition to see who can swear off consumerism and produce the least landfill garbage in an entire year. Their light-hearted competition is set against a darker examination of the sobering problem waste in North American society.  Even as Grant and Jen start to garner interest in their project, they struggle to find meaning in their seemingly minuscule influence on the large-scale environmental impacts of our “throw-away society”.

I don’t intend to pick on Westmount since every community on the island probably has a similarly large ecological footprint.

Westmount's Ecological footprint is the red, outer-most border

Nevertheless, it is just amazing when you look at the map above. The BLUE border is the physical size of Westmount. The RED border is the ecological footprint, or the size of the Earth’s resources it devours. The GREEN border represents the “ideal ecological footprint” according to some academic (see the full research here).

What’s the #1 source of this enormous ecological footprint? WASTE with 59% of the entire footprint! Waste has to be carried far away by gas powered vehicles and then stored in a place that takes space away from farms, towns and other productive spaces.

So, the #1 way to reduce your ecological footprint is to Compost! Yea, compost! It’s easy, it’s fun and you get empowered in the face of this ecological train-wreck called “modern, western life.”

This is great news, if it ever gets implemented. At least the money is there. Now, local NIMBY opposition must be overcome. This is local, sustainable thinking at a state level. Bravo!

Source: Montreal Gazette

On Monday, Ottawa and Quebec gave $215.1 million to Montreal, Laval, Longueuil and the South Shore regional municipality to build compost treatment centres. Montreal Island municipalities will add another $79.9 million for its centres, while Laval will kick in $56.9 million.

The question now is where the facilities will be built…

As for the Montreal Island, Montreal Mayor Gérald Tremblay launched a preemptive strike against “not-in-my-back-yard”-ism Monday by reminding suburban mayors and Montreal city councillors that four potential sites were identified in the island-wide waste-management plan, which the agglomeration council unanimously adopted last summer. It called for four compost-treatment centres, two in the centre of the island, and one each in the west and east ends.

Tremblay said that towns and boroughs have until June to submit potential sites in industrial areas for four compost treatment centres – two closed facilities that will convert garbage into biogas and compost, and two semi-closed facilities that will create only compost.

Construction could begin in 2011, with all centres up and running by 2014, said city spokeswoman Valérie de Gagné. The first to be built will be located in the central part of the island, she said. Montreal will also set up a sorting facility in the centre of the island where regular garbage will be taken in order to remove any recyclable or organic materials before it goes to a landfill site.

“The challenge is going to be to convince people to use a brown bin,” Tremblay said, adding that it took years for people to get used to sorting recyclable materials out of their garbage. “We have no choice – we have to go ahead with this.”

Here’s a solution to a problem commonly seen at holiday parties, or any party for that matter where people share food. When you bring your homemade spinach dip or guacamole to a party, you must remember to take back your container (usually a “Flubberware” of plastic poison), or even worse, use a disposable container that ends up in landfill.

With edible containers, you don’t have to worry about polluting or retrieving your container after the party is over.

Source: Kelowna.com

Diane Bisson, a Montreal design professor, has developed edible materials that can be moulded into containers. She insists that they are unlike the corn- or potato-based comestible plates that have been tested in Europe and taste like cardboard.

“I’ve spent a year testing about 400 different samples to come up with 40 recipes,” said Bisson, 49, who teaches at the Université de Montréal’s School of Industrial Design.

“The whole purpose of this is sustainable design,” she said. “It’s all about reducing disposable objects, the cardboard and plastic plates that are in every food court and every home. Objects like that get used once and then are thrown out. They’re filling the landfills. We have to find something better…

In 2011, she will work with scientists to refine her recipes for the market.

“We intend to have different flavours and tastes but they will be more neutral and the shapes will probably be closer to the shapes people know,” she said.

“But right now I’m being very creative so we can perhaps open new ways of handling the food, perceiving food and thinking about sustainability.”

Instead of relying upon the state of California, the city of San Jose has taken it upon itself to become energy independent (Montreal politicians take notice).

Europe has already adopted this technology because it kills two birds with one stone: reducing the amount of organic waste that goes to landfills and renewable energy gets produced.

Why can’t Montreal do this?

Source: Red, Green and Blue

San Jose, CA – Achieving a goal of 100 percent energy independence is a little closer for San Jose thanks to a momentous move by the City Council today. The City Council authorized the City Manager to negotiate and execute a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to develop potential lease terms and guidelines for developing an organics-to energy bio-gas facility…

This project would also see the cooperation of GreenWaste and Harvest Power, Inc., a company that provides leading technology and project development capabilities for harnessing the renewable energy in organic waste.

The Zanker Road Biogas facility would be the first facility in the U.S. with the technology to turn organic waste into bio-gas, keeping San Jose at the forefront of clean technology innovations. The technology that would find its home at the San Jose facility would use a process known as dry anaerobic fermentation to generate renewable bio-gas and high-quality compost. This technology has already been made popular in Europe.

All of the existing anaerobic digestion systems in common use in the United States currently process wet waste. By contrast, the technology for the proposed Zanker Road Biogas would use the dry fermentation technology specifically designed to process the relatively dry organic waste found in the municipal solid waste stream which is difficult to recycle without extensive pre-processing and currently ends up in a landfill.

This anaerobic digestion system technology has been commercially demonstrated in Europe by BEKON Energy Technologies, which has built 12 facilities in Germany and Italy and has 13 additional facilities scheduled for construction in 2009.

“This project not only demonstrates San Jose’s leadership in the production of renewable energy but will help us meet the economic development, zero waste and energy goals of our city’s Green Vision,” said San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed.

Tip of the Hat: Carolyn Baker

Why can't Montrealers recycle batteries?

Here’s one that really sticks in my craw, and it is courtesy of the same public official who prefers to promote the polluting car culture and ban wood stoves. How could it be that this man is responsible for Montreal’s Sustainability efforts?

I think DeSousa’s name should be changed to “DeSucksaLot”:

Source: Montreal Gazette

Montreal retailers got an unpleasant jolt this week when the city announced that its six Éco-centres would no longer accept dead batteries from local business owners.

Provincial law requires pharmacies, convenience stores and other retailers to come up with their own system to dispose of used batteries brought back by their customers, says Alan DeSousa, the city executive committee member responsible for sustainable development.

“It’s only reasonable that they be a part of the solution by being willing to take back the products and dispose of them properly themselves,” he said.

“We’re quite willing to take (batteries) on an individual basis, but when the city becomes the focus of an organized dump of these materials by businesses, the taxpayers bear the burden.”

Some merchants have complained the new rules may prompt more consumers to give up and toss their exhausted Energizers into the trash.

Despite public education campaigns, the provincial government estimates 94 per cent of batteries in Quebec are thrown out with the household waste. The batteries can contaminate landfills.

In addition to the six existing Éco-centres that accept hazardous waste, Montrealers can drop off batteries at borough halls, recreation centres and fire stations across the city, DeSousa said.

As for the small business owners, they’ll need to find a new method for dumping dead batteries, he said.

Tip of the hat: green514.com

Here’s a great idea for anyone who has been interested in reducing their household waste through composting (the process of transforming organic kitchen waste into rich earth soil).

Household waste that can be composted currently accounts for 30% of all waste that ends up in land fills or incinerators.

Compost Montreal is an organization that collects your compost for $5.00 a week and delivers it to a composting site managed by the Montreal Department of Parks and Horticulture. You get your very own compost bucket, and Compost Montreal will collect it from your front porch. This organization also provides members with finished compost in the spring so you can reap what you toss!

If you’re new to composting and aren’t sure how it works, or how it will smell in your house, they will teach you everything you need to know.

Compost Montreal currently serves the following communities: St. Henri, the Plateau, N.D.G., Outremont, Mile-End, Rosemont, and Hochelaga-Maisonneuve.

Research Credit: McGill Daily

In my experience, anything that is fast, cheap and easy to make is generally bad for human health, bad for the Earth’s health, and most likely both.

Styrofoam is one of the first modern pollutants (invented in 1938) that is considered a necessity of everyday commerce and agriculture. Yet at the same time, it pollutes us and the earth while these effects are not perceptible unless you visit a landfill or a polluted riverfront or beachfront. It is convenient that the inconvenient truth of plastics pollution is kept far away from the public eye.

This story in the Montreal Gazette hints at the nefarious affects of styrofoam but treads lightly. Most likely because major advertisers like Loblaws and Metro run ads in the Gazette. Alternatives are not really discussed which is strange. When I was a boy, 35 years ago, my mother would receive meat from the butcher wrapped in white paper.

The leading solution is an outright ban on the stuff. About 30 municipalities in California have done so to date. Recycling it is just a feel-good solution that shifts the problem to someone else, somewhere else. It currently costs about $3,000 per ton to recycle it – not exactly good business.

The story is quite long. You can read it here.

In this era of financial bailouts for banks and car makers, it seems only fitting that in Quebec we get a bailout for the Recyclers. The response from the man in charge is staggeringly similar to the ones in charge of the banks: “We had NO idea this was coming!” So far, the recyclables market has fallen 80%.

Unfortunately, all these bailouts only serve to prop up a failed, or failing, business model. Time will tell if the market for recycled materials will come back. This leads me to believe that the Greens running this program are no better equipped to lead in the future than the old, mentally lazy farts in auto industry.

Via: CBC News

It’s time for Montreal and Quebec to develop it’s own local market for recyclables and not rely upon foreign, Asian countries to take our wastes.

Via: Hour.ca

Recycling will get dumped or have to be buried, quite literally, unless a solution is found to revamp the practice in Quebec.

The global economic crisis has drastically cut into what recycling companies earn for their recycled materials, and the resulting loss could end in our recycling being buried.

In order to avoid a backlog in the 38 recycling centres in the province, the Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment and Parks, Line Beauchamp, has called on Recyc-Québec and Collecte sélective Québec to come up with an action plan in the next 15 days to help Quebec’s sorting centres deal with the crisis.

“The real question is ‘Can we afford to close our recycling centres?’ The answer is ‘no,’” says Karel Ménard from Front commun québécois pour une gestion écologique des déchets (FCQGED).

Last Friday, Beauchamp told Le Devoir that she has been aware of the difficulties facing Quebec’s recycling centres for the past three weeks – ever since China and India stopped their demands for recycled material to manufacture into new goods.

Mixed paper, metal, plastic and glass have gone from $150 to $40 a metric ton since September and in some cases processors are refusing to accept certain materials altogether. There is little money left to cover spending in equipment, workers and additional storage.

Groupe TIRU, the multinational that operates the integrated treatment and sorting of urban waste materials in Montreal is also in the mess. Owned by EDF (an energy company controlled by the

French government), they landed their contracts with both Montreal and Laval for a grand total of “zero dollars” per metric ton, says Ménard, expecting to generate revenues with the sale of the recyclables, often to developing nations.

Standards for Quebec companies are much higher than those in China. Most Quebec companies actually import used paper because recycled materials coming from Quebec don’t actually meet their standards, says Ménard.

Ménard and Beauchamp also agree we need to treat more of our own recyclables and improve the quality of recuperated materials, as well as our sorting practices, in order to make recycled materials conform to the norms of our own industries, which in turn must meet standards for export to the U.S.

“We must also admit that properly managing our waste materials has a real cost. [...] We can’t permit ourselves to backtrack 20 years after all this effort has been made to get every Quebec household recycling.”

In the next week, Beauchamp’s committee will recommend ways to improve the sorting and quality control of recuperated recycled materials in municipal sorting centres. Meanwhile, Ménard and the FCQGED have laid out the following recommendations for Quebec’s recycling industry in order to meet trying economic, and ecological, times.

POLLUTERS PAY

Implement an elimination tax of between $10 and $40 a metric ton, paid by everyone, which is returned to the municipalities so they can run their recycling plants. Up the tax further for industries that pollute, so they contribute their fair share to the municipal collection of recycling. This would reduce the general quantity of material for recycling and provide municipalities with the necessary funds to support their recycling centres in tough economic times, says Ménard. (At present, municipalities have no rights over the nature or quality of the products put in circulation by industry, but are responsible for their collection and treatment.)

QUALITY JUNK

Enact a unified province-wide collection and sorting practice and execute a national campaign to sensitize citizens about recyclables. Remove certain irritants from the system, like plastic bags and wine bottles, items that contaminate other recyclables and reduce resale value (SAQ could institute a deposit return policy for their own empties).

WASTE NOT

Develop a viable recycling industry at home. Currently companies aren’t required to include the percentage of recycled materials in the goods they distribute or produce – whether papers, plastics or bottles. But we already have laws on environmental quality that could be used to create such standards.

To view the full set of FCQGED recommendations, go to www.fcqged.org.