Recycling in Quebec: 4 new beverage deposit refund sites now open

The Quebec Beverage Container Recycling Association (QBCRA) has opened four new deposit refund sites to deal with the hundreds of millions of beverage containers that get recycled each year in the province.

They are called Consignaction+ and are capable of processing very large volumes of cans and bottles for citizens, as well as for industrial, commercial and institutional customers.

“The system that we’re putting in place is really extremely efficient. The equipment that we’re using are really top equipment, top quality equipment. Most of the jurisdictions in the world don’t use the type of equipment that we’re using,” said Normand Bisson, the president and CEO of the QBCRA.

“The essential thing is that we will be able to manage the volume of containers that will be returned.”

The Consignaction+ locations also accept smaller quantities of beverage containers.

“Someone can accumulate containers in a bag, drop it in the bag drop. Just use his application, his Consignaction+ app, and receive the payment later,” explained Bisson, adding, “it’s extremely easy to return containers this way.”

One of those four sites is in Montreal – in LaSalle.

The Consignaction+ sites are in addition to 11 regular Consignaction deposit refund sites in Quebec that accept bags of unsorted beverage containers.

There were plans to open 200 of these locations by March 1, 2025. Currently 80 are in the process of being opened.

“We need municipal permits. There are many elements like this that makes it more difficult to open a point of return. At the speed we were expecting,” said Bisson. “So we are working to have the most possible number of points of return on March 1.”

The LaSalle Consignaction+ site has the capacity to process roughly 25 million containers a year, about the same number as 50 retail sites.

“You can manage about 200 to 250 containers within one minute with these machines. So the time you would take normally in front of a machine to put 250 containers, the line, the queue that would be created, all of this disappears with the machines that are more efficient,” explained Bisson.