Reacting to the announcement of the imminent closure of four recycling centres in Quebec, including Montréal’s two main sorting centres, Saint-Michel and Lachine, Greenpeace Canada’s Oceans and Plastics Campaigner, Agnès Le Rouzic said:
“It is clear that with the proposed closure of two main sorting centres in Montréal and the dying recyclables market, cutting global plastic production and eliminating single-use plastics is more urgent than ever.”
The City of Montréal is currently holding a public consultation on its 2020-2025 Master Plan for Residual Materials Management’. The Plan largely focuses on improving recycling to reduce the amount of residual materials going to landfill. It is unclear whether the closure of the centres was taken into when the Plan was initially proposed. Since the Chinese market stopped accepting various types of plastic and other materials in 2018, the situation in Montreal is not unique. The Canadian waste sector has increasingly been struggling to find buyers for its recyclable materials and, as a result, plastic waste has been left to pill up in sorting centres and landfills in various communities. The global consumption of materials has reached a record 100 billion tonnes per year, according to a report published this week. The report also notes that the proportion of materials that are actually being recycled is falling.
“It is high time to innovate and focus more on reduction and reuse models, rather than continue to bank on a system that will never contend with the glut of disposable plastics flooding the markets, our communities and the environment. We hope that the City of Montréal will find an immediate solution that includes setting a timeline for a strong single-use plastic ban and calling on major plastic producers and distributors to start working on more sustainable product delivery solutions.”
ENDS
Note to editors:
Commentaries submitted by Greenpeace as part of the public consultation on the City of Montréal’s 2020-2025 Residual Materials Management Strategy and Master Plan
For more information, please contact:
Laura Bergamo, Communications officer, Greenpeace Canada
[email protected], +1 438 928-5237
