Here are some simple things to help improve the quality of your recycling.

Rinse out your containers

To do this you can use the water leftover from washing your dishes. This step is important so that paper and other materials in your bin do not become soiled. It is also a question of cleanliness and respect for people sorting everything manually in the sorting centers. Moreover, pots not properly rinsed can attract vermin inside the sorting centers.

Do not discard any number 6 plastic

This plastic is not accepted in the collection of recyclable materials. To identify the plastic types, look for a triangle made of three arrows (Mobius strip) and you can see a number inside this symbol.

Here are a few examples of items made of plastic number 6 (polystyrene/styrofoam): single use plates, bowls and utensils, mushrooms package, individual yogurt container, croissants containers (noisy and breakable).

The programme Finding Number 6 helps Montrealers to bring their polystyrene articles to the LaSalle Ecocenter, located at 7272 St-Patrick Street. This articles must be clean and without any packaging, label, absorbent pad or aluminium tops.

Separate the tops from containers

Both parts of a container will not necessarily be made of the same material (for example: a glass container with a metalic top or a bottle with a plastic top, both made of a different plastic). It is therefore important to separate them to make recycling easier. Moreover, bottles with tops can be a danger because these tops can turn into projectiles while bottles are being crushed in the machines at the collect or in the sorting center.

Learn more about the collection of recyclable materials in Ville-Marie borough (french only)