In the spring of 2018, Conseil régional de l’environnement (CRE) de Laval was mandated by the Environment and Ecocitizenship Service of the City of Laval to start an information and outreach campaign dedicated to the responsible management of residual materials from small and medium-sized industrial, commercial and institutional enterprises (ICIs). The meetings with ICI managers aimed to draw a summarized portrait of generated residual materials and to offer a support service in order to increase the quantity and quality of recycled materials, and reduce at the same time in a significant way the volume of materials sent to landfills. During the first phase of this first Ecocitizenship mandate, which began in the spring of 2018 and ended in the summer of 2019, meetings were held with over 800 ICIs.
Ultimately, the purpose of the services offered to ICIs in this first phase of the Ecocitizenship mandate was to allow the City of Laval to get closer to the objective targeted by the Québec Residual Materials Management Policy of the Ministry of Environment and Fight against Climate Change, which is to recycle 70% of residual paper, cardboard, plastic, glass and metal.
Along with setting in motion the first Ecocitizenship mandate by the CRE, the City of Laval sought to extend its organic material collection service to the entirety of rental buildings with 7 units or less. During this implementation process for the organic material collection at the residential level, a great number of schools, early childhood centres and daycare centres expressed their interest to take part in the organic material collection. In order to meet this increasing demand, the City of Laval tasked CRE de Laval to complete a second Ecocitizenship mandate. It is in a continuation willingness that the first phase of this second mandate was launched, in the fall of 2019, with 30 schools, early childhood centres and daycare centres that were met in order to get an accurate portrait of their residual material production and provide them with tools to reduce the volume of materials that end up in landfills.
From September 2020 to January 2021, the second Ecocitizenship mandate entered its second phase, which aimed to raise awareness and inform educational institutions in order to help them in the management and sorting of their residual materials in favour of the valorisation of organic matter. A total of 212 schools, daycare centres and early childhood centres were contacted and 149 of them were met during the achievement of the second phase of the second mandate.
Even though the implementation deadline for the organic material collection of ICIs, on Laval territory, is only set for the beginning of 2021, the addition, on a voluntary basis, of several educational institutions, daycare centers and early childhood centers to the organic material collection allows the City of Laval to get closer to its targets set as part of its 2020-2025 residual material management strategy. It should be remembered that the City set a goal to recycle 60% of organic matters before 2025, which will allow it to reach the thresholds established by the Ministry of Environment and Fight against Climate Change in the context of its 2019-2024 action plan deriving from the Québec Residual Materials Management Policy.
The Ecocitizenship mandate was was extended to 2021. Pursuing its information, outreach and education activities for managers and members of the school staff as well as child care centres in order to begin or improve the recovery of organic materials, CRE de Laval met with 156 ICIs from June to September 2021.
We firmly believe that visiting ICIs, as part of the Ecocitizenship mandate, has not only played an education and outreach role regarding the different collection types, but also allowed us to have a significant impact on the increase of both volumes and quantities of composted and recycled materials. Moreover, our interventions reduced in a significant way the quantity of materials send to landfills, therefore reducing the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions produced.
