Three out of four citizens participate in the collection of food waste in Quebec

The biomethanization plant allows Quebec City to generate more than a million dollars in revenue. Even if three quarters of citizens participate in the collection of food waste in purple bags, the City believes that the recalcitrants deprive it of part of the potential income.

The City of Quebec took stock Wednesday afternoon. The renewable natural gas (RNG) sold to Énergir allowed it to pocket $1.6 million between the months of March and November. According to her, the biogas produced could heat the equivalent of nearly 2,800 homes for a full year.

Next year, the City expects more revenue with the addition of institutional buildings, businesses and industrial buildings to waste collection. More than 1250 have registered.

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The municipal councilor responsible for residual materials management, Marie-Josée Asselin, emphasizes that 75% of citizens participate in the collection of food waste.

For citizens, when we do the right thing, we save collectively. Every time a citizen says: “I don’t like the purple bag, it doesn’t tempt me or I put something else in it”, we collectively deprive ourselves of income.

She also explains that the collection of residues allowed the City of Quebec to avoid paying $700,000 in royalties. When we eliminate material, we pay $32 per ton to eliminate itmentions the advisor. The objective is to divert material from incineration and landfill. […] When we misappropriate all this material, these 32 dollars, we don’t pay them.

We are in the process of changing behavior. We need to give people time to come to terms with this change.recalls Ms. Asselin. Slowly, not quickly, behavior modification will happen.

In July, the City was not able to know the quantity of food waste it collected in the purple bags. The scale that could make this possible is still not in service: the quantity of residue treated is therefore estimated by the City.

Online performance indicator

The City of Quebec will make public a performance indicator which will be updated every week. Citizens will thus be able to learn about the results produced by the biomethanization plant.

The plant cost $216 million in total, nearly twice as expensive as initial estimates of $124 million.

With information from Louis-Philippe Arsenault