biomethanization

City to pause food waste collection to install new scale

City to pause food waste collection to install new scale

Ruby Pratka

Local Journalism Initiative reporter

editor@qctonline.com

City officials are asking residents and business owners who use the city’s “purple bag” food waste collection program not to put their purple bags out for collection from Feb. 15-22, due to work being done at the city incinerator. 

During that time, workers will install a new scale to weigh the garbage that is returned to the incineration pit after the sorting of the purple bags, the city’s communications and citizen relations service said in a statement on Feb. 7. The scale “will allow the collection of data on the quantities of organic and non-organic residual materials,” they said.

Residents are asked not to place their purple bags in their bin during this period in order to keep them from going to the incinerator. 

This is the second time in the program’s history that food waste collection has been briefly paused for optimization; last January, collection was suspended for five days to facilitate improvements to the flow of bags on conveyor belts.  

The Ville de Québec launched its residential compost program in November 2022 in La Haute-Saint-Charles before gradually expanding it to the city’s five other boroughs. Since last year, businesses, industrial facilities and government institutions have been able to sign on voluntarily. Food waste at participating homes and businesses is separated into distinctive purple bags and sent to the city’s organic material biomethanization centre, adjacent to the incinerator, in Beauport. The residue is liquefied, heated and converted into methane gas and digestate, an agricultural fertilizer. 

According to the city website, 75 per cent of households participate in the voluntary food waste separation program. City officials say the conversion of food waste into methane has made it possible to inject more than four million cubic metres of renewable natural gas into the provincewide Énergir network. For more information on the program, visit ville.quebec.qc.ca/sacmauve.