Chris Lowrey
MUNICIPALITY OF PONTIAC Nov. 7, 2018
With the Municipality of Pontiac set to implement door-to-door compost pickup in June 2019, several residents have voiced concern.
Sheila McCrindle has been one of the most vocal opponents of the new plan.
“We’re a very low population density,” McCrindle said in September. “And a lot of people already compost. Why would we send trucks door-to-door – traveling hundreds of kilometres every week – to pick up very little residual [waste]?”
Residents of the municipality were asked to fill out a survey in March of last year to outline their composting habits.
After the survey was completed, the municipal council opted for an at-home composting program that would see residents compost their organic waste in backyard composters.
However, in February of this year, municipal council reversed the previous council’s decision and instead went with the door-to-door option.

At the most recent council meeting, some of the opponents of the door-to-door option voiced their concerns, which related to additional emissions from collection trucks and the cost of the program.
But Mayor Joanne Labadie defended the program, saying it’s more convenient for many residents and could save the municipality money in the long run.
Labadie said that since there weren’t many figures available to gauge what the cost would be for a municipality the size of Pontiac, municipal staff opted to go with the $160 per household figure.
The municipality arrived at that number by determining what an additional collection service would cost.
“But that’s not necessarily what we’re doing,” Labadie said.
Labadie explained that since the MRC des Collines handles garbage dumping, the municipality’s garbage is sent to La Chute – 140 km away – along with the garbage from the other municipalities in the MRC.
It costs $135 per tonne to dump garbage and recycling in La Chute. When the MRC went out to tender for compost collection, the price came in at $85 per tonne.
Under this plan, the compost from the Municipality of Pontiac would be shipped to Val des Monts and then shipped to UTEAU in Portage du Fort.
A municipal audit of resident’s garbage shows that 40 per cent of it is organic material that could be composted.
“We calculated that, even if we only removed 50 per cent of that compost material and diverted it to Portage du Fort, that would be a savings of $20,000 a year in our garbage [pickup costs],” Labadie said.
She added that the municipality could save $40,000 per year if 100 per cent of the organic waste is composted, but Labadie said that isn’t a realistic expectation.
Labadie also said that she approached the MRC and lobbied to ship the municipality’s compost directly to Portage du Fort instead of shipping it to Val des Monts first.
“We should be able to ship directly to Portage,” Labadie said.
The MRC des Collines agreed and when the municipality goes to tender for a collection service, the cost to dump compost should come in around $60 per tonne.
Not only that, but Labadie said that the municipality could save even more money depending on how much residents buy in to the program. If more people compost, it will cut down on the amount of garbage sent to landfill.
It costs $135 to landfill garbage, while it costs $80 per tonne for recycling and $60 per tonne for composting.
As a result, Labadie argued that if residents participate in the program, less garbage will go to the landfill, which will save the municipality money.
The contracts will go out to tender in 2019 when the garbage and recycling contracts end. Labadie said by negotiating all three services at the same time, the municipality can get a better rate.
She pointed to Rimouski where there was a large increase in collection costs because the municipality tendered the contracts separately.
The initial cost for residents will include the $40 to $60 for the bin itself.
When it comes to collection truck emissions, Labadie said that the new composting plan will actually cut back.
“Portage is 55 km away from our municipality whereas La Chute is 135 km away,” Labadie said. “So we have decreased the kilometres for the trucks.”
The impetus behind the plan is the Quebec government’s target of eliminating all organic waste from landfills by 2020. Additonally, the province wants municipalities to divert 60 per cent of waste from landfills.
The Municipality of Pontiac falls in a precarious spot when it comes to population size. The province has mandated that small municipalities – those with less than 5,000 people – won’t be held to the same standard as larger municipalities.
The problem? The population of the Municipality is just over 5,600 – which makes it one of the smaller municipalities that has to meet the 60 per cent diversion rate.
“Because our municipality is over 5,000 residents, we must adopt a waste management strategy for our organics,” Labadie said.
She also pointed out some practical reasons she thinks the door-to-door option is better.
She said that with so many elderly residents in the municipality, it would be unreasonable to ask them to trek out into their backyards in the dead of winter to dump their compost.
She also pointed to the fact that, while many residents already compost, products like meat and soiled cardboard can’t be composted at home.
Ultimately, Labadie said that this is a problem facing many municipalities, and the long term costs could outweigh those associated with door-to-door compost pickup.
“If you look at the costs of inaction as a society, our landfills are filling up,” Labadie said. “Once La Chute fills up, then what?”