Trash, recycling or compost? Here’s how to untangle yourself…

In Montreal, journalist Louis-Philippe Messier travels mostly on the run, his desk in his backpack, on the lookout for fascinating subjects and people. He speaks to everyone and is interested in all walks of life in this urban chronicle.

Even conscious young academics make mistakes in sorting waste. Our columnist followed training that was supposed to unravel it, but which left him almost as perplexed. Here are some tips on how to better recycle and compost.

In the cafeteria of UQAM’s Hubert-Aquin pavilion, advisors stationed near the bins help students sort their waste correctly.

The generation that has been immersed in environmentalism and ecoanxiety since birth is not always sure of what it should do.

This can be understood if we trust the sometimes Byzantine subtleties of the instructions.

For example, the City of Montreal website says: no wood in the compost.

It seems clear. But further on, we learn that we must compost wooden utensils and wooden coffee sticks, and even toothpicks.

Puzzle

In front of the material from a quiz game from the Écho-Logique organization, a group of Uqamians in communication puzzle over a plastic fork:

“It goes in the recycling, it’s clean!” said one.

— No, it’s going to the compost! protests his neighbor.

— But plastic can be recycled…

— Not if it’s compostable plastic, then it can’t be recycled.

– Look, it says “compostable” on the fork,” points out a student.

The group then places the utensil in the compost bin… Error!

“In Montreal, we don’t compost plastic, so the compostable plastic spoon goes in the trash,” says Clémentine Dueyou, the workshop facilitator.

Are you following?

“The recyclable coffee lid n^o 6 can be recycled in Quebec City, but in Montreal, you have to put it in the trash,” M also tells me.^me Dueyou.

“It changes depending on the municipalities and it’s constantly evolving,” comments Louise Collignon, the director of eco-responsibility for UQAM.

“Several of our students come from elsewhere and do not necessarily know the rules in force in the metropolis, hence these workshops in the cafeteria.”

Complicated!

The quiz activity didn’t teach us everything, but it did teach us some things.

“I just learned that aluminum can be recycled,” Mély-Jade Marois told me.

“I didn’t know that even small cans of V8 are now returned for 10 cents,” confides her colleague Raphaëlle Mandeville.

“If it were simpler, people would do it more,” thinks Nicolas Gauthier, a law student, who has just had Clémentine explain where to place what.

“The fact that everyone makes so many mistakes shows that the rules are not clear,” he adds.

There’s an app for that!

To train yourself in the subtleties of sorting, a training tool exists: Recyc-Québec’s free phone application called ça va où?, which adapts its responses to the city where you are.

The plastic that covers crates of spring water bottles is recyclable, but not the plastic that wraps magazines, which goes in the trash… Did you know? Me neither!

After half an hour of answering the questions from Where’s it going?, I learn from my mistakes and I assimilate some less obvious exceptions… and everything I know now may no longer be true in the near future.

Information: recyc-quebec.gouv.qc.ca

Info box (with 4 photos of the application)

Here are some questions and answers from the Quebec application It’s going to where?, which will adapt its answers to your municipality.

1) L’aluminium: recyclable

2) The protective film of the cleaner: recyclable

3) The plastic cover n^o 6: in the trash in Montreal but in recycling in Quebec.

4) The yogurt bag: not recyclable, in the trash