Montreal City Weblog

Kate 10:46 on 2020-09-24 Permalink Reply  

• Meezly 11:55 on 2020-09-24 Permalink

  Doesn’t society know by now that recycling is a myth? It shouldn’t be surprising, but doesn’t make it any less depressing.

• Kate 12:37 on 2020-09-24 Permalink

  The way we recycle here, mixing glass, metal, paper and plastic together, is also a big clue that we’re not doing it right. But it seems that oil companies have conspired to make us believe plastic can be recycled when, mostly, it can’t.

• nau 12:46 on 2020-09-24 Permalink

  Let’s not overstate things. Plastic recycling is mostly a myth but glass, paper products and metals are all recyclable. Admittedly, Montreal/Quebec recycles these poorly, mixing them all together so as to extract the least possible use value from them and only collecting a very narrow portion of household metals.(Yes, I see Kate has beaten me to the punch on some of this). Instead, they should focus on first collecting as much metal as possible (the scrappers get the big stuff but lots is still just thrown in the trash) because it’s the most valuable and highly energy intensive to dig up and refine. Paper and glass ideally would be collected in various sorted streams that would maximize use value (imagine if glass from Montreal could actually be sent to be re-used in the glass plant in Pointe-Saint-Charles, how crazy would that be). If the lowest quality paper isn’t worth recycling, it could be composted, and if the lowest quality glass isn’t, it’s not a big deal if it’s landfilled (it’s chemically inert, there’s no big energy use difference between new and recycled glass apparently and the raw material input isn’t exactly scarce). Of course, more sorting would require the populace making more effort than the politicians think they’re willing to. I guess the other big question is with it becoming clear that plastic recycling is mostly bunk, will there be renewed efforts from those seeking build incinerators?

• Faiz imam 14:39 on 2020-09-24 Permalink

  The single biggest thing we could do to improve recylcing is to boost composting rates. If we can get people to put dirty paper in the compost, that would really increase the quality and thus value of recycled paper.

  cardboard food packaging is a huge issue for recylers and it seriously cuts its value.

• Ephraim 18:30 on 2020-09-24 Permalink

  Maybe it’s time to actually TAX plastic at the import and manufacturing level. You use it, produce it or import it, you pay the tax. When it’s more expensive than alternatives… we will stop using it.

• Blork 21:11 on 2020-09-24 Permalink

  It’s been said three billion times before but bears repeating: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. IN THAT ORDER. As in, if you’re recycling it’s because you’ve failed on the first two “Rs.”

  But people don’t want to hear that. They just want to have their blue bins/bags which lets them use plastics and glass with abandon, knowing (thinking) that it’s harmless because they’re recycling. :-/

• Chris 08:40 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  Blork, the 3 Rs have been superseded with the 5 Rs: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle, in that order.

  And indeed it’s the first that’s most important. Stop buying crap in the first place!

• walkerp 09:43 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  Fully agree with the 3 and 5 Rs. As individuals, we have to start making harder choices about what food we buy.

  However, the bigger problem is structural and it gets harder and harder to make those choices. Plastic wraps everything. We need to be complaining to supermarkets about superfluous wrapping (hello PA “Nature”) and we need to continue to be activists against the oil companies and the governments that subsidize and prop the industry up.

  (On a positive note, there are more and more farmer’s markets and in the fall you can get all your veggies directly from them without using any plastic at all. I noticed a major reduction in how much crap I have been taking to the curb in the last 3 weeks.)

• Blork 09:53 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  Why do people have to ruin something that’s perfectly fine the way it is? Nobody’s going to remember the five Rs, whereas the three Rs are catchy and easy to remember. And the two extra Rs don’t add anything. “Refuse” is ambiguous and it’s intended meaning is already expressed in “reduce.” (Refusing is a way of reducing.) And re-purposing is part of re-using.

  So now, instead of having a catchy phrase that everyone can remember and relate to, we have a longer and harder to remember phrase that sounds like it’s been corrected by a naggy teacher.

  FAIL.

• Michael Black 10:21 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  Yes, “reduce” covers “don’t buy”. “Recycle” covers “reuse” and “repurpose”, ie “find a second use for it”, except so much effort has been put into formal recycling.

  If we want to worry about something, what about ewaste recycling? People are told to do that, so even perfectly good stuff is going that way. I think I see less electronics at rummage sales and waiting for tye garbage. But I’m not sure I trust the “recyclers” to pull out the working stuff and pull out the unusual or collectable stuff, I suspect it’s just down to extract the gold and other metal. A lot of stuff that’s tossed is still good, and useful to some. Some if it, especially older, can be repaired (maybe not economically feasible, but fine for hobbyists doing it themselves), and non-working stuff can be a source of parts for new projects. But it’s just seen as a monolith. Someone suggested some years back that ewaste recycling is really about keeping things out of the used market.

  Let’s not forget that recycling is old. Done in the thirties out of desperation, done during WWII because things were scarce. But fifty years ago a slow resurgence. Forty years ago Westmount and Outremount had door to door newspaper recycling. Non-profits doing it, but it had city approval. And there were newsprint pirates, moving in, and the non-profits counted on the money from selling the newspapers to pay for truvk rental and gas. Newspapers, and only newspapers, had to be tied in bundles. And that went on for a long time, before cans and glass were added. Other paper, and plastic, and no more bundling came “recently”, presumably to make it easier for people. Remember, Montreal started recycling with those green bells in neighborhoods,. Probably a lesser collection, but likely everyone doing it took some care.

• Kate 10:23 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  OK, I know I’ve done this rant before, but it does bug me that a single-person household like mine – one woman and one cat – can produce a large bag of recyclables every two or three weeks, and there’s almost nothing to do about it. In fact, the pandemic is almost certainly going to be a step backward in even the simplest efforts to re-use containers, from a degree of caution.

  I get some of my veg and other stuff from Lufa, which doesn’t use a lot of packaging. The cat eats food from a large foil bag bought roughly every 3 weeks. But I eat hummus for breakfast, and I’ve estimated I probably throw out at least a hundred of those little plastic pots a year. I don’t buy much in cans, but I don’t know any other way to get tuna, sardines or Italian tomato stuff except in tins, and I don’t know other ways to get olive oil, soy sauce or wine except in bottles. And they all go into the “recycling” which may not be recycled at all. None of these containers can be reused usefully, either.

  And I don’t run a wasteful or fancy household either. I can’t solve this one.

• MarcG 11:16 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  Some health food stores (do we still call them that?) have bulk olive oil refill stations. For the other ones, minus the fish, aside from making them yourself I don’t see a way around it.

• Alex 12:55 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  Hummus is super quick and easy to make, we have an instant pot that cooks dried chick peas in 20 mins, we pick up all the ingredients from l’epicerie en vrac if you fancy to reduce your plastic use. There are also some new places opening up that sell stuff in reuseable jars: https://www.facebook.com/epiceriebasta

• MarcG 13:36 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  @Alex Can you point me to the model of pot that you have? I’ve been thinking of getting one and 20 mins for dried beans would be a real plus.

• Alex 13:48 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  @MarcG I have this one https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/instant-pot-duo-pressure-cooker-6-qt-0432672p.html#srp You can do all kinds of things in it. We use it for cooking beans, chili, dhal, yogurt (not all at the same time). Here is a list of the cooking times for various things https://instantpot.com/instantpot-cooking-time/#tab-id-3

• Blork 14:05 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  Instant Pot is great for dried beans, but remember that ALL Instant Pot recipes are understated. When people say “10 minutes” they never include the 10+ minutes it takes to get up to cooking pressure, then the cook time, then the cooling down, pressure-release time that can be 10-15 minutes or more.

  It still beats cooking in a regular pot for most things, but I always get a laugh out of these recipes that say “cook it in the Instant Pot in four minutes instead of 20 on the stovetop!” and then the Instant Pot ends up taking the same amount of total time and then you have more stuff to clean.

• MarcG 14:10 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  @Blork Indeed. I just looked at a brown rice recipe and it basically takes the same amount of time I can do it in a regular pot.

• Blork 14:14 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  OTOH, I can go from a bag of dried black beans to ready-to-eat black bean soup in about 90 minutes (mostly hands-off).

• Chris 14:17 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  Blork: Heck, “recycle” is redundant with “reuse” as recycling is a form of reuse. So why not just 2 Rs then? easier to remember! “Refuse” I think is a very important one, capturing the idea of just saying no when offered, I dunno, a plastic straw or bag or whatever. Much better than reusing or recycling the item. Or just saying no to the pressure to upgrade your phone every year. It’s anti-consumerist and anti-capitalist, so I don’t expect it’ll ever catch on though.

• Blork 14:20 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  No, @Chris, reuse and recycle are two different things. Reuse means use the thing two or more times. For example, re-using your glass peanut butter jar to store leftovers. Recycle means return the object to manufacturing and build a new one with the old materials, such as grinding up that glass peanut butter jar and making a new glass object from it.

• Blork 14:26 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  …people frequently misuse “recycle” when they mean “reuse” like “I recycled my plastic water bottle to use for watering my plants!” That’s incorrect. There is no “cycling” there. It’s just a plain re-use. The “cycle” in “recycle” refers to the manufacturing cycle. So grinding up your plastic water bottles to make new ones, or to make something else out of the raw materials, is recycling.

• jeather 16:07 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  What I like about the instant pot is not that it is all that much faster, it is that I put everything in and get to walk away. I’m not sure how you have more pots to clean, I just have the one pot, which is a different one than I would on the stovetop, but fairly similar in cleaning needs.

• Blork 16:26 on 2020-09-25 Permalink

  There is more to clean. A regular pot is a pot and a lid. Instant Pot is a pot, a lid, a silicon seal, the little metal cap under the vent, and if there were any splatters during your cook, then scrubbing around all those nooks and crannies where the outer pot and the lid connect plus all those nooks and crannies around the vent and vent switch.

  The extra work is worth it sometimes, but not for really simple things. I hear about people using the IP to make a cup of rice and that sounds ridiculous to me.