Business Opportunities Weblog

June 25, 2008 by Nicholas | 3 Comments

Canada.com:

Many of us are ready and willing to separate our food and garden waste from other garbage, but Montreal still does not offer an organic waste collection program. You can do it yourself, of course, but many residents don’t have backyards and gardens in which to store the waste and spread the resulting compost.

That’s why Stephen McLeod decided to take the organic matter into his own hands. Last summer, McLeod started an organic waste pickup service, charging clients $5 a week to pick up and properly dispose of their table scraps and garden wastes. The service, called Compost Montreal, has almost 100 clients in St. Henri, the Plateau and Notre Dame de Grâce.

After making a few trips to the Louis Cyr Éco-quartier to dump his bucket of organic waste, McLeod realized it made no environmental or economic sense to have all these people driving their small quantities of waste to Éco-quartiers all around the city.

“I did that a few times before I said to myself, ‘This is crazy. How many people are going to do this? I’m sure there are a lot of people who want to compost, but not very many who are willing to do this.’ ”

So McLeod asked around and quickly found several environmentally conscious neighbours willing to pay him $5 a week to cart off their compostable waste. McLeod bought himself a trailer for his bicycle and a big garbage can in which to collect the waste, and began his door-to-door pick-up service last July.

Image via DenverGov

In Eco-friendly | 3 Comments