Montreal's move to biweekly trash pick up proving to be a slow process
And they say their plan is working.
'People are making progress in their thinking, realizing that when they participate in the recycling collection, the organic waste collection, that there is not much waste left,' Marie-Andrée Mauger said.
As a member of the city's executive committee in charge of ecological transition in Mayor Valérie Plante's Projet Montréal party, Mauger is the point person overseeing a switch that has reduced the frequency of garbage collection in some neighbourhoods to a biweekly pickup.
Three boroughs —St-Laurent, Verdun and Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve — have started implementing the plan, which is also a part of Plante's pledge to 'make Montreal the greenest city in North America.' But residents in Mercier-Hochelaga-Maisonneuve are not thrilled with the stench.
Story continues below advertisement
Jonathan Haiun, a spokesman for Ligue 33, a community group in eastern Montreal that advocates for quality of life issues, said spacing out the collection hasn't had the desired effect since it was brought in late last year.
'The problem seems to be some people who just aren't composting or at least not doing it properly, and then a lot of the stuff that we do find in the garbage is just a mix of everything,' Haiun said.
'What we have been asking for since the beginning is that they go back to collecting garbage every week because we don't feel that that's actually an ecological measure.'
According to most recent survey results conducted for the city and obtained by Ensemble Montreal, the opposition party at city hall, some 54 per cent of residents polled consider switching to trash pickup every two weeks 'unacceptable.'
Get daily National news
Get the day's top news, political, economic, and current affairs headlines, delivered to your inbox once a day. Sign up for daily National newsletter Sign Up
By providing your email address, you have read and agree to Global News' Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy
Meanwhile, other major Canadian cities have had biweekly pickup for years: Toronto since 2008, Halifax in 1999 and Vancouver in 2013. In each case, there were growing pains but all happened hand-in-hand with organic waste collection.
Mauger said she expects once composting extends to 100 per cent of the city by the end of 2025, things will begin to shift.
According to the Leger city survey, less than half of Montrealers use the so-called brown bin to dispose of organic waste and their knowledge of what goes in the bin has only risen by one per cent, to 41 per cent, since 2021.
Story continues below advertisement
The survey results aren't surprising and transition rarely comes without complaint, said Karel Ménard, a Montreal environmentalist.
'I think it's a shared responsibility between the citizens, and the municipality, which has an obligation to have a clean and healthy city,' said Ménard, head of Front commun québécois pour une gestion écologique des déchets, an organization that promotes ecological waste management.
'Also, I would even say, the producers, because what we often see in the alleys are short-lived, disposable items, so there's also a problem of overconsumption.'
Many municipalities in the Greater Montreal area and elsewhere in Quebec, have switched to biweekly pickup, if not every three weeks or monthly in some cases.
But Greater Montreal is mainly suburbs with single-family homes, which isn't the case in the city's boroughs.
'There are 900,000 doors in Montreal, plus 40,000 businesses, industries, and institutions that have municipal collection,' Mauger said. 'We estimate that eighty per cent of the buildings in Montreal don't have their own driveway, so it's not really one size fits all.'
The zero waste plan places an emphasis on reducing food waste, more composting and recycling. The city has also prohibited the use of single-use plastic items, like cups, utensils and straws.
Opposition Coun. Stephanie Valenzuela of Ensemble Montréal said the polling results suggest Projet Montréal has a lot of work to do.
Story continues below advertisement
'The results really speak to the amount of energy and investment the city has been putting into informing residents on the goals that we're trying to achieve,' Valenzuela said.
Valenzuela said the public reaction also contrasts with how the administration has portrayed itself as being innovative and avant-garde when it comes to the environment.
'We've seen that when it comes to their big promises, when it comes to the environment, they're actually missing the mark,' Valenzuela said.
But Mauger is confident the city will be able to extend biweekly pickup to all 19 Montreal boroughs by 2029.
'What we see in this poll, it's also that three-quarters of the population are aware of the problem of sending too much waste to the landfill that's filling up at a very high pace,' Mauger said.
'And they want to do more to be part of the solution … so that's really promising too.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
National Observer
2 hours ago
- National Observer
Energy minister leans on oil industry talking points in carbon capture announcement
At a carbon capture funding announcement, Canada's energy minister was using rhetoric straight out of Big Oil's playbook. On Friday, the federal government announced $21.5 million for a handful of carbon capture projects in Alberta, and while the amount isn't going to move the needle, Energy and Natural Resource Minister Tim Hodgson's choice of words and tone signal how Prime Minister Mark Carney's government plans to engage with the fossil fuel industry. Hodgson billed this as 'an investment in the long-term future of the oil and gas industry' and highlighted other federal support for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS). 'Every barrel of responsibly produced Canadian oil and every tonne of clean Canadian LNG can displace less clean, riskier energy elsewhere in the world,' Hodgson said at the announcement in Calgary. 'Our exports can help our allies break dependence on authoritarian regimes and help the world reduce our emissions. Canada will remain a reliable global supplier — not just today, but for decades to come. The real challenge is not whether we produce, but whether we can get the best products to market before someone else does.' The line that Canadian oil and gas is more ethical and more responsibly produced than in other parts of the world — and that it displaces dirtier fuels elsewhere — are tried-and-true industry talking points. Similarly, the idea that Canada will inevitably remain a major oil producer or be replaced in the market by other players is a familiar oilpatch argument. 'Is that Minister Hodgson saying that, or is that somebody from the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers?' Stephen Legault, senior manager of Alberta energy transition at Environmental Defence, asked in a phone interview with Canada's National Observer. 'Because the two, in that statement, sound indistinguishable.' On Friday, the federal government announced $21.5 million for a handful of carbon capture projects in Alberta. The minister's remarks signal that Carney's government is trying to find a way for Canada to continue on as a petro-state and is 'desperately' looking for ways to somehow make it socially acceptable, Legault said. Bitumen from Alberta's oil sands is among the dirtiest, most water- and carbon-intensive oil in the world. Communities downstream of the oil sands live with health and environmental impacts every day. Carbon capture and storage has become a major fixation of the oil and gas industry in recent years as it seeks social licence to continue producing despite its climate impacts. 'These are talking points that the Pathways Alliance uses to justify trying to extract billions of dollars in Canadian taxpayers' money to clean up a mess made by the most wealthy companies in the country, and some of them the most wealthy in the world,' Legault said. Export Canadian LNG to fight climate change Hodgson emphasized the need to 'make investments that fight climate change, so we can reduce carbon emissions and bring the lowest-cost, lowest-risk and lowest-carbon products to domestic and international markets — like we have just seen this week with the momentous opening of LNG Canada Phase 1.' Some of Hodgson's comments justifying Canada's export of fossil fuels to reduce global emissions could also be lifted right out of the Conservative Party of Canada's election campaign materials, which proposed lowering global greenhouse gas emissions by exporting more Canadian LNG to countries that currently burn a lot of coal. However, a growing body of evidence throws cold water on the notion LNG is a lower-emission fuel than coal. A study from Cornell University, published last October, found carbon emissions from American LNG are actually 33 per cent higher than coal, when processing and shipping the LNG are taken into account. There's also widespread skepticism about the business case for ramping up LNG production and export. In October, researchers from the U.K.-based Carbon Tracker found global markets for LNG are likely to be oversupplied by the end of the decade. 'This was not the tone of a minister of natural resources who takes climate change seriously,' Legault said. 'Two weeks ago or three weeks ago, people were terrified that their communities were going to burn down, and the fire season had barely begun. We've got record temperatures around the world right now, people are dying, and it would appear as though the Carney government is going down the same path that we might have gotten with a Poilievre government, which is to believe the rhetoric that these oil and gas companies are spewing and to believe the rhetoric that Danielle Smith is spewing.' Legault quipped that perhaps Stephen Harper's staff left his playbook for 'ethical oil' sitting around and one of Carney's people dusted it off. Government 'taking the temperature' for Pathways investment Hodgson delivered his remarks at Bow Valley Carbon Cochrane Ltd.'s facility, which is getting $10 million to design and install a system and pipeline to capture carbon from the Interpipeline Cochrane Natural Gas Extraction Plant, transport it and sequester it in a well. Enbridge Inc. and Enhance Energy Inc. are getting $4 million and $5 million, respectively, for work to support separate storage hubs in Central Alberta by identifying underground reservoirs to store the captured carbon. Half a million dollars will go to a company to improve measurement, monitoring and verification of CO2 stored underground. The remaining $2 million is to investigate using small-scale carbon capture technology on diesel engines. This $21.5 million comes from the Energy Innovation Program's $319-million funding stream for carbon capture. The funding was introduced in Budget 2021 and will span seven years. The federal government also has a CCUS investment tax credit worth more than $5.7-billion in its first six years, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer's estimates. All of this is dwarfed by a multi-billion-dollar carbon capture megaproject proposed by a consortium of Canada's six largest oil sands producers called the Pathways Alliance. The project, with an estimated $16.5-billion price tag, would capture carbon dioxide from more than a dozen oilsands sites in northern Alberta and transport it to an underground storage site south of Cold Lake, using approximately 600 kilometres of pipelines. Legault believes Hodsgon's remarks are 'taking the temperature' of the Canadian public to gauge what the reaction will be 'when the government makes an announcement that they want to support the Pathways Alliance.' At the news conference, Hodgson did not answer multiple questions about the Pathways Alliance's proposed multi-billion-dollar carbon capture megaproject and whether his government will put public money on the table, other than to say the discussions are 'active' and he will not 'negotiate in public.' A January 2025 study by The International Institute for Energy Economics and Financial found the Pathways project business model is shaky at best due to high costs and limited opportunities to generate revenue. The project is currently stalled awaiting an investment decision. A 'multi-billion-dollar CCUS industry' CCUS is widely criticized by climate advocates for its inefficiency, high cost and the fact it risks locking in oil and gas production despite the majority of the emissions created by burning fossil fuels. As Legault put it, these projects 'tend to leave an awful lot of carbon on the table, and that's not what we need right now.' 'If carbon capture was such a great idea, then the companies should pay for it themselves. It's not like they're cleaning up a mess that the Canadian public made. They're cleaning up a mess that they made.' Canada can develop 'a world-class, multi-billion-dollar CCUS industry' if governments move quickly and strategically, Hodgson said Friday, adding that Alberta is an 'MVP' in the federal government's game plan. New legislation grants the federal government broad powers to override environmental laws and regulations to build projects cabinet deems in the national interest, which could include a wide range of projects from ports, rail, electricity infrastructure, pipelines and carbon capture. The legislation has added fuel to conversations about new pipelines and Carney has name-dropped the Pathways carbon capture project as a possible contender. On Friday, Hodgson said, 'One of the criteria is that we honour our commitments to a clean economy and to fighting climate change, and that will be one of the key ways that we evaluate any project going forward.' The legislation does not force the federal government to treat this or any of its factors as criteria that must be met; it just suggests it as one of many to consider. 'I really hope that the prime minister has read his own book and is able to translate the value that he talks about in his book [ Value(s): Building a Better World for All ], into policy on the ground for Canada and its future, because right now, we're not getting many hopeful signs,' Legault said.
Montreal Gazette
2 hours ago
- Montreal Gazette
Letters: Bilingual greetings shouldn't be shamed by CAQ government
Re: ' Language complaints soar in Quebec as English service eclipses concerns about signs ' (The Gazette, July 4) I often travel to Ottawa for work. When I stop in Casselman, a Franco-Ontarian bastion, I am greeted with 'Hello-Bonjour.' It's one thing to say everyone in Quebec is entitled to be greeted and served in French, as previous governments have, and quite another to attempt to shame businesses for also wanting to welcome clients in another language, as the Coalition Avenir Québec is doing. English is not a foreign language in Quebec, as much as some nationalists may like it to be. Jordan Black, Rosemont A caring response to an urgent need Re: ' 'I'm happy': From homeless to housed, tenants grateful for new Lachine facility ' (The Gazette, July 3) It was a pleasure to read about the Old Brewery Mission's Tenaquip Place. In a world where stories of hardship often dominate the headlines, it is deeply uplifting to see a project focused on compassion, community and hope. This complex is not just a structure — it's a sign we are capable of thoughtful, humane responses to urgent needs. We are at our best when we look out for one another. To those who made Tenaquip Place a reality, thank you for your vision and humanity. Elizabeth Bright, Côte-St-Luc Patriotism is a personal matter Re: ' Canadian pride isn't a betrayal of being a Quebecer ' (Robert Libman, June 28) It is infuriating that a nationalist commentator, as reported by Robert Libman, would try to negate what another person believes in by stating 'Canada is an artificial political structure.' The commentator also claims we can't be Canadian and Québécois at the same time. Perhaps they missed a recent Association for Canadian Studies poll that showed 82 per cent of Quebec respondents — believing a nation's 'members share a common culture, language and history' — felt 'they were part of the Canadian nation.' To harbour strong patriotic feelings for one's nation is fine, but to dismiss another's pride in a country you don't identify with is wrong-headed. Goldie Olszynko, Mile End NATO spending goal needs a rethink Re: ' Trump hedges on NATO pledge ' (NP Montreal, June 25); ' Ottawa pledges to ramp up NATO defence spending ' (NP Montreal, June 26) NATO's decision to raise member countries' defence spending to five per cent of GDP will pose serious difficulties for spending on domestic needs. The chief reasons given are the need to counter the increased threat posed by Russia and other hostile countries, and to match U.S. military expenditure in NATO. Yet according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia spent only US$149 billion on the military in 2024, while NATO countries collectively spent US$1,506 billion, with European NATO countries at US$454 billion. The U.S. spent only 3.38 per cent of GDP on defence in 2024. President Donald Trump has said the five per cent goal shouldn't apply to the U.S., but only to other NATO countries. For Canada to reach five per cent, it would have to increase its annual defence to $150 billion. This would probably result in significantly increased taxes, debt or severe cuts in domestic spending. Canada and other NATO countries should seriously reconsider this increase. Robert Hajaly, Montreal Submitting a letter to the editor Letters should be sent by email to letters@ We prioritize letters that respond to, or are inspired by, articles published by The Gazette. If you are responding to a specific article, let us know which one. Letters should be sent uniquely to us. The shorter they are — ideally, fewer than 200 words — the greater the chance of publication. Timing, clarity, factual accuracy and tone are all important, as is whether the writer has something new to add to the conversation. We reserve the right to edit and condense all letters. Care is taken to preserve the core of the writer's argument. Our policy is not to publish anonymous letters, those with pseudonyms or 'open letters' addressed to third parties. Letters are published with the author's full name and city or neighbourhood/borough of residence. Include a phone number and address to help verify identity; these will not be published. We will not indicate to you whether your letter will be published. If it has not been published within 10 days or so, it is not likely to be.
Toronto Star
2 hours ago
- Toronto Star
What the CBC needs: not more money, but real leadership
In the new book 'The Big Picture: A Personal History of Independent Television Production in Canada,' veteran TV producer Pat Ferns — who helped shepherd into existence such well-remembered creations as 'Glory Enough for All' and 'Letter from Wingfield Farm' — outlines the evolution of Canada's independent production industry and its worrying future prospects. Here, he offers some free advice for the CBC. In a 1939 speech, my godfather, Leonard Brockington — the CBC's first chairman — passionately urged our new public broadcaster to concentrate 'all available sources of revenue … on the production of Canadian programs.' He described the ideal model as 'public ownership of stations, competition in programs,' and warned that 'advertising and the profit motive should not be the foundations on which this new medium of mass communication should be built.' If only his advice had been followed. Instead, we've ended up with a hybrid public broadcaster — particularly in television — that is increasingly dependent on advertising revenue, and perpetually pleading poverty when compared to its international peers. In broad strokes, CBC's budget is about $1.4 billion of which about $400 million comes from advertising revenue — more than the promised new funding, but more than sufficient to distort its vision as a public broadcaster. Opinion articles are based on the author's interpretations and judgments of facts, data and events. More details
