Recycle this!

In Quebec, the recycling truck is separated. It’s a specially-constructed dump truck, with a container that is split into two halves, lengthwise. It is loaded from an access bay near the cab, which offers the same options to loaders on both sides of the vehicle, so that they can put fiber and PVM into the appropriate half. When the truck arrives at the plant, each side is lifted and dumped separately, where other machinery then picks up the material and takes it to the next step for further sorting.

There is a certain amount of wrongly-placed material scattered throughout the loads, and this subsequently has to be correctly sorted by hand, but it gets there mostly by accident or mistake. Less than six per cent of the material is in fact garbage, and our citizens can take credit for that low figure.

The plant will not accept any material that is ‘contaminated’ by food. Pizza boxes, which absorb oils and other substances, are impossible to clean, practically speaking, and must not be put in the blue box. Other food containers made of recyclable plastics and metals can be put in, but only if they have been thoroughly cleaned. The reason for all this is to avoid attracting vermin and insect pests to the plant.

The contractor also noted that cardboard should be cut into pieces no larger than two feet by two feet. It’s like Noah’s Ark— the cardboard goes in two by two.

The subject of plastics is vast, and there are many places on the internet where you can find out about them, but for recycling purposes all plastic types have been given a number, which is stamped on the item within the now well-known recycling symbol (a triangle made of arrows.) Our recycling contractor will accept all numbers except #3 and #6. As the art critic said: you don’t have to understand this, you just have to accept it.

The biggest conundrum facing all participants in the recycling process is the type of container residents use. There are bags, open boxes (the famous blue box), tall containers in various sizes and colours, wheeled or otherwise, with and without lids. In the suburbs and rural areas you’ll often see 360-liter wheeled bins being used at private homes (Westmount uses them at apartment buildings and institutions), but they are problematic for residents who live on steep hills, or have no storage space. Some containers can be handled by machinery, but this is not an option in Westmount because the loading mechanism requires a lot of headroom, and we have trees and power lines to reckon with.

For complete information about Westmount’s recycling policies and practices, please visit the environment section on the city’s web site at www.westmount.org.