EMILY HSUEH
Pontiac March 24, 2021
The MRC Pontiac will be implementing a new pilot project in April to tackle the issue of agricultural plastic waste disposal.
“The goal of the project is to collect agricultural plastics and send them to some facilities for recycling,” said Thierry Raimbault, environmental coordinator for the MRC Pontiac. “We will try to find a solution to . . .
transform [the waste] into small pellets that can be put in a new process. The issue is that you can’t put it in the blue bin, it’s not a household [recyclable]. The issue is to find a system that is not too expensive to collect and recycle.”
The three-year project has been in the works for the last three or four years, with Raimbault teaming up with MAPAQ to review the needs and wants of farmers and to determine the best way of disposing of the plastics.
The project was finally able to launch after the MRC received a donation of $113,000 from the Desjardins GoodSpark Fund and collaborations with CREDDO and MAPAQ.
The pilot project will be split into three phases, each one adding 15 businesses to the program for a total of 45 and the end of the three years.
Raimbault said they expect to collect one tonne of waste per farm per year.
“For now it’s only going to be low-density polyethylene plastics, but maybe in the future we will take in more kinds of plastics like twine and things like that. But for now it’s only plastic bagging.”
The project will see specialized presses sent to each of the businesses registered. The presses will compact layers of plastic into blocks that can be dropped off at designated sites to be disposed of. He explained that currently, the majority of plastic waste from farms is burned.
“For the farmers who are near the Shawville-Clarendon area, it’s not going to be door-to-door but they are going to bring the plastic bale to Ralph Lang’s site,” he explained. “For businesses who are in Allumettes Island, we are trying to have an agreement with the municipality for the farmers to bring their bales to the municipal waste site, and then our transporter will take the bales from there to his place.”
Ralph Lang will be the primary transport of the plastic bales that will be sent to Joliette — a town north of Montreal — for valorization.
