MONTREAL -- Recycling will carry on as usual in Montreal, the city has said, despite the closure of two recycling plants on the island.
Last week, Rebuts Solides Canadiens, which operates facilities in Lachine and St-Michel, said the plants lost too much money and would close. But other options are available for recycling, city administrators said.
"We already started looking at who else could operate the center, and we have a few people, a few companies that are ready to do it," said Jean-Francois Parenteau, Mayor of Verdun and member of the Montreal executive committee.
The city already owns the recycling building in Lachine. Rebus Solides owns the machinery at the St-Michel facility, but the land and the building are city-owned -- which would make the transition to a new operator relatively easy.
Montreal is also counting on the construction of a new facility in the east end to take full control over how materials are recycled.
Opposition members at city hall have said the administration should have seen this coming the day foreign countries closed their borders to the garbage and recycled materials from Canada. It now wants to force the city to share all the information it has on recycling.
"We're going to be tabling an emergency meeting to have all the information to have them directly from the services, the bureaucrats. Not from the administration," said Lionel Perez, Ensemble Montreal member and leader of the official opposition at city hall.
Other cities, including Sherbrooke, have replaced their recycling contractors with city workers, a solution Montreal is also considering.
