The composting community thinks the City should step in with curb-side pickup
by Sarah Pearson
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Photos courtesy of Éco-Quartier Jeanne Mance
et Mile End/Comité St. Urbain |
Once a week, McGill student Debbie Veinish brings leftover potato skins, banana peels, apple cores and soiled teabags to her 8:30 am class. When class is over, she dumps them in a black box behind the Environment Studies building, where a campus organization later turns them into compost.
Municipal officials still call this organic waste "garbage," but Debbie and increasing numbers of Montrealers beg to differ. They continue schlepping to community composting centres, making the inconvenient choice to reduce their ecological footprint.
Community composts are popping up across the city, serving green-minded citizens who lack the resources to start a compost at home. Most are run by Éco-Quartier, the borough-funded Montreal environmental action program. Robert Couture at the NDG office says there are about eight Éco-Quartier compost centres in the city. Although four of those are in his borough alone, bins are always full to the brim on his weekly maintenance trips.
"It's mainly people who live in apartment buildings who use them," Couture explains, many of whom brave snow, rain, and crowded bus rides to dispose of their organic waste.
Action is being taken to make composting accessible to Montrealers, and there is certainly a demand.
"We are providing a solution for people who care," says Graeme Lamb, coordinator of Gorilla Compost, McGill's student initiative, which has roughly 200 registered composters. McGill's subcommittee on the environment boasts that Gorilla Compost is an "achievement" in their 2006 Annual Report. Despite this, the program receives no funding from the university administration.
With the highest per capita water consumption rate in the country, Montreal's green record isn't so hot.
Composting centres across Montreal are united by the lack of government support they receive. Though Éco-Quartier is funded by the borough councils, it can only budget for composting initiatives at the expense of other projects. Couture thinks it's high time the city stepped in with curb-side compost pickup.
"Toronto was forced to start a composting service because they ran out of space for their garbage," says Couture. "We wish the city of Montreal would start its own service, but it doesn't think it's urgent enough to warrant the funding. We think it's urgent."
With the highest per capita water consumption rate in the country, Montreal's green record isn't so hot. Composting is not the only environmental initiative the city has failed to fund. At the Saint-Michel Environmental Complex, the city's most elaborate environmental rehabilitation centre, a non-profit circus association called Tohu runs the entire educational mandate of the centre. Tohu offers free tours of the complex and houses a pavilion for environmental education. These circus artists do an excellent job teaching people to live in a sustainable manner; a job that, arguably, should be the city's responsibility.
So while the budding number of green Montrealers is encouraging, composting remains an underground culture.
"There is a sense of camaraderie among composters," Lamb says. "A certain level of pride comes from the fact that you are going out of your way." And like many underground cultures, this one raises a larger question: should composting be a lifestyle choice or a social responsibility?
For the self-motivated composting community of Montreal, there is no question. "By choosing to compost," says Lamb, "you are stating that it is a social responsibility."
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