Michael Lancione couldn’t believe his eyes.
He was waiting for a commuter train at the Montpellier station in St. Laurent last fall when he saw a CN employee taking garbage and recyclable materials out of separate compartments in waste bins along the platform and dumping them together into the same bag.
Lancione used his cellphone to make a video of the man as he collected the recyclables and trash. Three weeks later, he saw the same thing happen. He recorded it again.
“He wasn’t even trying to hide it,” Lancione, an architect who uses the commuter train to get to work and home every day, told The Gazette.
It turns out that for at least several weeks train commuters who thought they were helping the environment by recycling were doing no such thing – employees tasked with emptying new dual bins for garbage and recyclables were throwing everything into the trash because they had not been told otherwise.
As part of its sustainable development plan, the Agence métropolitaine de transport, which runs the suburban train lines, has been replacing all its garbage cans.
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They’re being replaced with dual bins that have receptacles for trash on one side and another for paper, metal, plastic and other recyclable materials on the other side.
The AMT contracted out the garbage collection to CN, which is supposed to make sure garbage and recyclables are kept separate and taken to separate centres to be disposed of, said spokeswoman Martine Rouette.
Dumping recyclables in with garbage “is not tolerated by the AMT,” she said.
After The Gazette provided the videos to the AMT, the agency demanded CN come up with a plan to prevent the mixing of trash and recyclables from happening again.
CN spokeswoman Julie Senécal said that at the time that the two videos were taken, the AMT was in “transition,” switching from garbage to dual-waste receptacles. It was only on Nov. 17, Senécal said, that CN got “guidelines” from the AMT explaining how to handle the waste.
After The Gazette sent the videos to the AMT and CN last week, CN met with the employees who handle the trash at the train stations, she said.
As for Lancione, he said seeing the garbage and recycling mixed together at the Montpellier train station made him stop using the AMT’s dual bins.
“It’s discouraging,” he said. “Now I just bring my recycling home or to the office and leave it there.”
mbeaudin@thegazette.canwest.com
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