Quebec has taken a long hard look at itself, and decided it doesn’t like what it sees.
Its policies simply aren’t working. Overall waste generated has nearly doubled in the past 10 years, with waste going to landfill rising by over 10% in the same period.
One of its key targets was to get 60% of the province’s waste food into composting by 2012 has had to be abandoned: the current figure is only 12% and the target just cannot be met.
However, rather than just trying to fiddle with green taxes, the government has gone straight for the jugular and announced plans to make it illegal to dump rubbish and food waste.
Key points of the 2010-15 Five Year Plan include:
- cutting per capita waste by over 13% to 700kg a year by 2013
- banning all paper and cardboard from landfills in 2010
- banning all food waste from landfill by 2013
- making manufacturers of electronics and batteries take responsibility for their disposal as soon as possible, with the scope further widened in 2011
- spending an additional $50m on recycling centres by 2012
- recycling / recovering at least 70% of all waste from construction industry
This is a legislative programme which deserves heartfelt applause. And I hope it sticks, because if Quebec can pull this off there really is no excuse for any other state or country to lag behind.
Picture Credit: Spy Hill Landfill 4 by D’Arcy Norman from flickr under Creative Commons Attribution License.
About Chris Milton
Quebec is a province not a state, if you cannot get a fact such as the political area correct, what else in the article is incorrect?
FYI – We have Provinces and Territories in Canada.
States – n’est pas!
k davison, MD, and everyone else in Canada … my deepest apologies, I have corrected the article.
the GIST of the article was NOT whether or not quebec is a state or a province… who the heck CARES?!?! the article was extremely informative about the GOOD THINKING of the people who LIVE in quebec…. can you not read the article and glean the information without picking apart the non-essential details? good grief, people….
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This was talked about in the 1970′s, then like poverty, hunger, over population, and all the other problems, they just vanished. Maybe the news media should start telling the real stories instead of just the propagand.
Poverty, hunger and over-population vanished?
k cook : thank you for the support
However, it is a valid criticism though that if there is one factual error in a piece who knows what other mistakes there are? Good journalists need to be 100% perfect, and I was found lacking. Perspective, though, is always a good thing 
David: speaking of good journalists, that’s what they do. However the media agenda is often driven by two things: being fed good stories by friendly PRs, and writing popular items. It’s difficult, and not very rewarding, to write about the uncomfortable truths companies don;t want you to say and the public don’t want to hear.
I am so pleased. I am not big on legislation, but sometimes it’s the only way to force us humans to do the right thing (I hope that changes PDQ -please don’t burst my bubble of hope).
We all make mistakes: Everyone’s a film critic, but few make films!
I agree exact facts are necessary, but to get caught up on a technicality, means losing sight of some really great news (my head is full of cliches now: ‘can’t see wood for the trees’, ‘baby out with the batwater’ etc.).
This is really great news!
Oh, and I can’t stand uber-friendly (greenwashing) PRs. They are the written equivalent of politicians kissing babies. ‘Popular items’ – maybe you’d get more postive feedback if you wrote about Jordan and Peter or Brad Pitt’s latest diet?
Sorry…..must go before rant breaks out.
Well, I would tell ya what I think – what I really really think – but k.kook and alex saved my poor old brain the strain. Nice ones fellas ! (not that I talk like that, of course) (Or should it be “Geist” ? hold on while I just do another few days research)
“Moron” lovely word – fabulous landfill !
Have you never heard of “affairs od province” ? – you really should get out more !
You never heard of “Affairs of Province” ? ! you should get out more – please ?
Quebec is to be congratulated. Other places should follow their example.
Huh, hadn’t heard of this. But then I don’t pay attention much to TV or the local paper.
It’ll be interesting to see if the municipalities within the island of Montreal can get a composting program together. I would love to see this happen, since I’m living in an apartment. If I had a house and yard I’d have a composting pile going.
I’m just starting to get into vermicomposting again. I do what I can with my worm bin, but I can’t put everything in there. My freezer is already full of waiting food scraps. As a vegan, I really should have several bins, but that will have to wait til my worm population grows.
We’ll see where we’re at in 2013, I suppose.
How silly.
The real solution is in looking at “waste” as a resource to be tapped.
What sometimes gets me with stories like this is the fact there is an acceptance of waste.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Quebec are doing a marvellous job with this, but it’s only the first step and shouldn’t lead to complacency.
But once they’ve started to address “using waste as a resource”, as likwidshoe says, they need to address cutting down and out waste altogether.
I was really glad to come across this blog. While I was living in Montreal, I found there was a lack of environmental concern ( at least in my area). I think the only way to change wasteful behaviour is to create the appropriate legislation first, as this develops awareness of a given issue.
Looking forward to the next posts.
Andrea