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Recognition for R4 Compost keeps on coming 

Cutting edge composter keeps Concordia in demand

By Anna Sarkissian

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If their impressive track record is anything to go by, the R4 Compost team should be clearing space on the mantle for more prizes – they keep rolling in.

As the first institution in Quebec to introduce large-scale organic waste collection and composting on-site, Concordia has been at the forefront of waste reduction for several years. R4, a working group of Sustainable Concordia, has garnered a string of accolades, including a Forces AVENIR – Environment category prize, certification from Recyc-Québec, recognition from the City of Montreal and the Conseil régional de l’environnement, among others.

Over the summer, the team received a Quality and Productivity Award from the Canadian Association of University Business Officers for our university-wide composting system. The program aims to promote excellence and innovation in higher education.

They will also be featured in L’Actualité as finalists for the Quebec Prize of Excellence in Corporate Citizenship, co-sponsored by the magazine with Korn/Ferry International and NATIONAL Public Relations. The results will be announced on Sept. 23 at the Tremblant Forum on Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability in the Laurentians.

“Our project has opened horizons for others to do the same,” says Environmental and R4 Coordinator Louise Hénault-Ethier.

In the year since they set up their $35 000 industrial composter on the Loyola Campus, other institutions have approached them for help. For example, Université de Sherbrooke contacted R4 and asked, “How do we do it?”

“We took them through the initial steps and showed them how we installed our program,” Hénault-Ethier says. They also provided tours of their facilities and supplied information about adapting the project to individuals, schools or organizations.

With funding from the Sustainability Action Fund, R4 has been working closely with the staff of Facilities Management, especially Custodial Services Manager Marc Champagne and Loyola Property and Operations Manager Gerry Barrette who were key players.

Working with students provided the team with much-needed flexibility so they could iron out problems before handing the operations over to the university within five years. “We need to implement the collection system, do tests and adapt our recipe.” Hénault-Ethier says.

R4 has been compiling their extensive expertise into a free technical guide which will be published on their website this fall with support from the university, the Association québécoise pour la promotion de l’éducation relative à l’environnement and Recyc-Québec.

“People can learn from our mistakes,” says R4 Compost Project Manager Alexis Fortin.

He also explains they have been working with the Ministère du Développement durable, de l’Environnement et des Parcs to suggest changes to their guidelines for on-site composters.

Currently, institutions can compost vegetable matter without a permit. If they want to compost meat or fish they need to conform to the regulations for large industrial sites. “It didn’t make sense at our scale. There was a risk of discouraging people,” Fortin says. The new guidelines should be approved this fall.

R4 composted 20 tons of material this year and estimates they will be able to increase their capacity five fold by 2012. The university sends approximately 650 tons of waste to landfills every year, of which 20% is biodegradable.