Longueuil agrees to pay additional $5M to keep recycling service going

After the City of Montreal had to bail out its recycling plant to the tune of $30 million in May, Longueuil is now taking a similar step in order to keep its sorting centre open.

Longueuil has agreed to pay the company that manages its recycling facility, in Saint-Hubert, Que., an extra $5 million over the next three years to compensate for the losses being felt throughout the industry.

The South Shore agglomeration's mayors initially rejected a request for more money from the recycling company, M D Inc.

But Sylvie Parent, the mayor of Longueuil, said that after analyzing other options, they chose to pay up rather than see the sorting centre close.

"Our main goal was to keep operations from stopping," said Parent. "We couldn't imagine saying to our citizens, 'now go put those [recyclable items] in the trash.'"

Industry hit by China's ban on imported waste

The whole recycling industry was hit hard by China's decision last year to impose a wide-ranging ban on imported waste.

Roughly 40 per cent of the material collected in Quebec is sorted and then turned into new products right here in the province. The other 60 per cent of the material was sold abroad, mostly to China.

China, which is the destination for most of the world's garbage, instituted its ban partly in response to the huge amount of contaminated recyclable materials it said it was receiving.

Municipalities across Quebec and Canada have been running into a similar problem, with companies asking for more money on top of their initial contracts to make up for the loss in sales.

Gilbert Durocher, director of the recycling company M D Inc., also heads Rebuts Solides Canadiens, the company that runs the Montreal plant.

He said that his company has lost millions since the price of recycled materials dropped and that people have to realize that the cost of business has changed.

Based on a report by Radio-Canada's Jean-Philippe Robillard