The pressing reality of living on an island is that land is a finite resource and eventually we run out of space to put our garbage. Transforming some of our garbage to fuel and soil is one step toward sustainability.

If you don’t want to wait for the city to get its ducks in a row, you can start composting today.

Source: Montreal Gazette

Quebecers have a growing garbage problem. Landfill sites are filling up, and the rotting garbage in them can leach contaminants into groundwater and produce a gas composed of methane and carbon dioxide, greenhouse gases that contribute to climate change.

Quebecers produce about 810 kg of garbage per person every year, but the province wants to get that down to 700 kg by 2015. One of the biggest components of our garbage is organic materials. An estimated 44 per cent of the garbage we produce every year could be composted. As part of the garbage diet it has planned for Quebecers, the province has banned organic waste – including food waste – from landfills by 2020…

…Green waste can also be transformed into natural gas through a process called biomethanation, but no food waste is now being transformed into biofuels in Quebec, according to Récyc-Québec…

..After two years of scouting for locations, the city has chosen four sites it thinks are suitable for building compost-treatment centres. Under the city’s plan, biogas plants would be built in Montreal East and LaSalle, and composting centres in St. Michel and Dorval. They would handle organic waste from across the island, reducing the number of trucks carrying garbage off the island to landfills.

The plan is for compost collection to be in place for all buildings on the island with eight units or less by 2014, city officials said. Yard and food waste would be collected in the same bin on the western half of the island; on the eastern end there would be separate collections of food and yard waste.

Come celebrate the environment during the 4^th annual Éco-fête NDG

Saturday September 10^th, come join us for the 4^th annual Éco-fête, a great annual event in the neighbourhood. In addition to Éco-quartier, there will be plenty of other environmental organizations presenting kiosks and conducting workshops aimed for children as well as adults.

• Composting / vermicomposting workshop
• Green cleaning solutions workshop

• Recycled toy exhibit
• Eco story reading
• Corn husk dolls

Join us between 1pm and 4pm at Paul-Doyon Park (Monkland and Girouard). Pass by and share your love of the environment with us!

In order to help you out with your gardening, The Coop Maison Verte has organised a series of workshops related to gardening techniques, local food and food conservation for April and May. They are all free, bilingual, and will all take place at the coop, 5785 Sherbrooke street West.

• Seed saving April 13th with Nel Ewanè, agr. Msc. from Action Comuniterre 7 to 9 pm
• Beekeeping workshop April 14th with Alain Péricard from Rucher Apis 7 to 9 pm
• Community Farming information session April 15th with Dave Merson from Ferme Mange-tout 7 to 9pm
• Compost 101 May 2nd with Julieta from Eco-Quartier NDG 7 to 9pm
• Green Smoothie workshop May 3rd with Ildiko Brunner from Raw in Montreal 7 to 9:30pm
• Vermi composting workshop May 10th with Philippe Robillard from Pousse-menu 7 to 9pm
• Sprouting and fermentation workshop May 12th with Philippe Robillard from Pousse-menu 7 to 9pm

For more info contact:

Stéphanie Guico
Coordinatrice du marketing | Marketing coordinator
stephanie@cooplamaisonverte.com
514 489 8000

For many Scandinavians and Europeans, skiing isn’t just a sport, it’s how they get to work.

Source: Montreal Gazette

…at Le Massif in the Charlevoix region, where a $230-million expansion is under way, green transportation is a major theme. The project, which should be completed by 2013, will offer dedicated rail service from Quebec City, gondola service from the train station to the base chalet and various types of green transportation on site (including dog sled and electric vehicles). A new hotel will be heated and cooled using geothermal and solar energy.

Mont Sutton, in the Eastern Townships, now composts organic waste from its four restaurants, buys local food when possible, provides shuttle service for its employees and guests from the village to the mountain, and encourages carpooling on its website and through occasional lift-ticket discounts. Along with five other Quebec ski hills, Mont Sutton is running an awareness program to get clients and bus drivers to stop idling their engines in ski-hill parking lots (and elsewhere).

…

So if you must downhill ski or board, and apparently many of us must, it’s important to support these changes and to encourage more. Here are some other tips on skiing green to keep those mountains white:

- Take a bus or a train to the ski hill whenever possible. Check the ski-area websites to see if they are served by bus or rail. Also check out express-ski.com,which offers bus transportation from Montreal and lift ticket deals to several ski destinations, including Killington, Le Massif, Mont Tremblant, Mont Ste. Anne, Smugglers’ Notch, Stoneham, Stowe, Sugarbush, Whiteface and Sejour.

- Carpool whenever possible. Check ski station websites to see if they offer a carpool coordination service. You can also coordinate with other skiers and find group travel deals at qc.bougex.com.

- Take your own food and drinks. Even if some resorts do offer recyclable dishes and packaging, you will waste less energy, reduce waste and save money by taking your own food in your own containers.

- Don’t idle your engine at the hill or elsewhere. It’s bad for your engine, wastes gas and pollutes big time. The vehicle will warm up faster as you drive.

- Buy or rent used equipment at places like Play it Again Sports and La poubelle du ski.

More:
- Sustainable Slopes
- Keep Winter Cool

Mayor Tremblay

The new 2011 $4.5 Billion Montreal city budget released by Mayor Tremblay has many goodies for car-free folk:

• 8% increase ($32 million) to the STM and AMT for metro/train/bus service
• $45 per car tax to further fund public transit (not really a benefit)
• $28.3-million over 3 years to further develop Montreal’s bike paths

While these are good things, keep in mind that the city will still spend about $265 Million on roads, tunnels, road crossings, bridges and traffic lights!

There are also other nice sustainability perqs:

• 245,000 high-volume recycling containers (which also help keep the recycled waste out of streets and sidewalks)
• The construction of 5 large scale composting facilities by 2014 (despite NIMBY protests)

The biggest criticism I have is that the tax increase to pay for all these goodies is unsustainable. Home owners get hit with a 2.5% property tax increase which seems higher than current inflation (zero?). Why not zero tax hikes? That’s sustainable!

Highlights of the plan include funding for:

• more bike paths
• green promenades through the most densely populated sectors
• charging stations for electric cars
• curb-side pickup of kitchen compost for buildings with less than 8 units (sorry apartment dwellers!)

Source: Montreal Gazette

Source: Dirt The Movie

1. Only one planet that we know of in all the galaxies of the universe has a living, breathing skin called dirt. For 2 million years, humans have used dirt to grow their food for survival. If we don’t take care of the soil, our future is condemned. We can’t survive on Twinkies alone. (But it sure would be *fun…*for an hour or so.)

2. A handful of soil contains tens of billions of creepy-crawly microorganisms. These organisms keep plants, animals, and the planet alive.

3. Industrial farming is eroding the soil and disrupting its structure. We’ve lost a third of our topsoil in the last 100 years.

4. When there are miles and miles of only one species and one variety growing on our farms, as there is in modern-day industrial agriculture, this creates a vulnerable system. Monocultures are dangerous to our future. Diversifying crops on our farms, especially in drought, can keep the system from collapsing.

5. When we grow just one species on our farms, it’s an all-you-can-eat restaurant for pests. Once a pest learns to unlock the key to that plant, you have a pest infestation, and then you add pesticides. Exposure to pesticides, especially in children, has been linked to higher birth defect rates, cancer, learning disabilities, and abnormal hormonal changes.

6. Insects and plants are so like us physiologically, cell to cell, protein to protein, gene to gene, that if a pesticide is going to kill plants and insects, it’s going to kill humans, too. *Ta-da!*

7. Chemicals (synthetic fertilizers and pesticides) deplete the life of the soil. They take away the structure and the moisture of the soil. They take away the very organisms that make the soil fertile. When you add a layer of compost to your dirt, instead of a nasty chemical fertilizer, you’re adding life to your dirt, and can then call it “soil.”

Repeat after me: *Compost, compost, compost*.

8. When the land is dead and we add synthetic nitrogen fertilizer to feed the crops, only about 20 percent goes to the plant roots. In the Midwest, the rest of the wasted fertilizer flows into the rivers and streams, and then into the Gulf of Mexico. This excess fertilizer feeds algae that grow and suffocate nearly all of the marine life, creating “dead zones” where only jellyfish survive. This mobile nitrogen combines with oxygen, which forms nitrous oxide and rises into the atmosphere accelerating climate change. Twenty-five percent of greenhouse-gas emissions come from agriculture.

9. In India, farmers have been pushed to buy more genetically modified seeds, chemical fertilizers, insecticides, and tractors. Now a farming activity that was zero cost is increasingly expensive. In India, over the last decade an *estimated 200,000 farmers have killed themselves*, many by drinking the pesticide they can no longer afford.

As farmers around the world go broke and lose their farms, their land is taken over by international agribusinesses that grow genetically modified single crops for a globalized economy.

10. Each year 100 million trees are turned into 20 million mail-order catalogues.

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 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