I think anyone that takes matters into their own hands and specifically out of the useless hands of Alan DeSousa and City Hall is to be commended.
Stephen McLeod is one such person. With 60 clients spread around StHenri, NDG and the Plateau, who are willing to pay 5$ per week for Stephen to pick up a 5 gallon bucket of compostables and turn it into well…compost, he’s one happy camper.
“It’s something that needs to be done,” he says. “I’ve always had this save-the-world… I dunno, mania, I’m always looking to do something meaningful. I used to be a technical writer, and I was being well paid, but it essentially meant nothing.”
After reading this article in the Mirror I recognized his blue pickup truck one night parked outside my place in StHenri. The truck bed had big blue barrels of organic goodness which gave off a very slight odor of vegetal decomposition. One of his partners was off gathering a bucket from a customer down the street so I said, “Hey aren’t you the…”
Veronik had met him at a Centre Ecology Urbaine event that was partly focussed on Cote St Luc’s brown bin pilot project. He remembered that meeting and we discussed the Mirror article and his potential growth rates. NDG still on the slow side, but with an upcoming article in the Gazette, the tide should turn. I commended him on his project and vowed to sign up next week.
If you think 5 gallons per week (for 5$) is too much, he recommends splitting the service in two with a neighbour. That’s our plan. Jess… I’m emailing you now.
For more info - (and to SIGN up) check out: compostmontreal.com
Tags: Compost Montreal · Stephen McLeod · Urban Compost6 Comments
6 responses so far ↓
Cool service! I sadly don’t have the interest in maintaining my own compost, even if I know it’s a good thing. I think I’ve even heard of some municipalities (can’t remember where) that have this service as they do recycling (i.e. you pay for it through your taxes). Now that would be amazing.
But this $5 a week service is a great start. Who knows, maybe if enough people do it, it will turn the tides to get the city to invest in something similar.
Something for us to consider if he’s already picking up in the plateau. Maybe we could get our whole condo in on the deal.
I think that’s a fantastic idea. Maybe even 4 buckets would be enough for the lot of you. I’m sure getting higher density of clients would be in his interest as well. :) You go get em! Our vermi composter is constantly reaching it’s limits and with no back yard per say we can’t install a stackable composter. Think this would be the best solution for a lot of people. Of course moving to Cote-St Luc would be the ideal. (shoot me now)
No REAL technical writer would find it meaningless. ;)
I was waiting for the first technical communicator (which by shear chance makes up about 20% of my readers) to pipe up on that quote. :)
[…] to close that organic loop, we signed up for Stephen McLeod’s ‘Compost Montreal‘ service. Bucket in hand, it’s already been filled with the help of a kind neighbour […]
Would you have Alan DeSousa’s contact info? I haven’t been able to find it