Waste remade

Compost Montreal will set you up with
everything you need to make sure your
old food doesn’t pollute

by CHRIS BARRY

Name: Stephen McLeod

Age: 32

Occupation: Proprietor of Compost Montreal

Bio: This resourceful St-Henri stud had been working the glamorous bicycle messenger beat for years, at one point even launching his own courier company in the effort to “dig out of the hole I’d dug for myself.” And then, in the spring of 2007, while heading to his local compost centre with a box full of food waste, he experienced the eureka moment that would lead him to start up Compost Montreal—a highly successful, environmentally friendly business “that sells itself. You see, I realized when I went to my compost centre for the first time that, like, not too many people will want to go through all this hassle just to compost their stuff.” So now, for a whopping five bucks a week, Stephen and/or someone from his eight-person team will set you up with a first rate compost box and a bunch of biodegradable bags and stop by your digs every seven days to carry your food muck away to a nearby composting facility. Then, once a year, he’ll deliver the “agricultural grade” compost your garbage has produced, free of charge, back to you. He drives an ’84 diesel Mercedes which he’ll soon be converting to run on vegetable oil.

Do most Montrealers generally understand the connection between composting and global warming? “Our customers certainly do, but I doubt most people get it—believing since it’s food that it’s just going to rot anyway, not realizing just how much carbon their food produces while decomposing in a landfill.”

How much food waste Stephen and his crew figure they divert from landfills every week: “Between five and six tons.”

The neighborhoods they’re currently servicing: Downtown, Plateau, NDG, Côte-des-Neiges, Outremont, St-Henri, Mile-End, Rosemount, Villeray, Hochelaga-Maisonneuve, Hampstead, Montreal West—with Verdun and Lasalle soon to come. Contact them at (514) 690-5773 or via compostmontreal.com.

Given that City Hall keeps threatening to set up a compost collection service someday, is he, as a dedicated environmentalist, all enthusiastic about the idea or more concerned said endeavour will simply put him out of business? “So much depends on how they set it up—the processing plants they build, where they’re located. They might really fuck it up as well, and it could still take years before they get anything together. Whatever they end up doing must be sustainable. If they do it right, they’ll be able to make money from it. But quite honestly, I haven’t seen any plans they’re considering that make much sense. Unfortunately it’s all just greenwashing and politics as usual right now.”

If I’m too cheap/poor to hire his service, so far as my carbon footprint is concerned, might I be doing the environment a favour if I simply flushed my food waste down the toilet instead of throwing it in the trash? “Um, I imagine that’s marginally better but I wouldn’t recommend it. Instead, if you really had to, I’d throw that stuff out of a moving car, and, like, anyone who sees you and thinks you’re littering just doesn’t get it.”

Last book read: The 2010 Conscience Verte coupon/rebate guide.

Musical preferences: Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Tom Waits.

Words of wisdom: “Don’t wait for the government to fix things for you, go out and fix them yourself.”

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