New recycling centre in Lachine will send glass to landfill for now

Montreal Mayor Valrie Plante inaugurateda state-of-the-art, $50-millionrecycling centre in Lachine Tuesday a recycling centre that, for the time being at least, cannot sort and clean glass.

Aglass-sorting and cleaning machine donated to the centre by coEntreprise Qubec,a private non-for-profit organization that represents businesses marketing recyclable material,is now not expected to arrive until the spring.

"We ordered it.The agreement is signed. It's time for this," saidJean-Franois Parenteau, the Montreal executive committee member responsible for the environment.

Until the $2.5-million glass-handlingequipmentarrives, glassdestined for recyclingat the centre will be sent on to a landfill to be crushed and spread as aggregate, in place of sand unless packers can be persuaded to take it.

"We are in discussion with different packersfrom Quebec to use the material," Maxime Roberge, a waste management engineer at the City of Montreal, told Radio-Canada.

100,000 tonnes ayear

The new centre's inability to handlerecycled glass put a damper on the plant's otherwise celebratory inauguration.Plante saidthe Franois-Lenoir plant is the most advanced recycling centre in the province.

Some 80 trucks a day will arrive at the centre in Lachine from everywhere on the island, west of Ville-Marie. The centre will be able toprocess 100,000 tonnes of recycled materials per year 58 per cent of the recyclable material collected in the city.

The plant will useautomated machinery to separate paper, cardboard and plastic.

That means just 35 workers will operate the facility. Working conditions will be much better, too:the work areas aresound-proofed, well-ventilated and air-conditioned.

Plante said this plant is part of the city's master plan to attainzero-waste by 2030.

"This will significantly improve the recycling of plastic and paper, which means that the quality, and therefore the value of the products will be improved," said Plante.

'It wasabout time'

"It wasabout time that Montreal hasa large and new sorting centre," saidKarel Mnard, the executive directorof the Quebec Coalition of Ecological Waste Management.

Mnardsaid for decades, Montreal only had a single sorting centre, in Saint-Michel, which has not been updated in many years.

Thatsorting centre in Saint-Michel is toremain in operation for another five years, until a new centre is built in the city's east end.

As for glass recycling, the new machine set to be operational in Lachine by the spring is supposed to do a better job of cleaning glass, leaving it 95 per cent pure.

Mnardexpressed reservations about how well that will work. He said if Quebecers want to ensure their glass can be recycled into other glass products, the change needs to start at the curb.

"When you put glassinto the curbside collection bin, it's being contaminated with ceramic, porcelain and brick," said Mnard.

Mnardsaid glass that has impurities cannot be melted down to make new bottles and other objects.