Waste at McGill

Currently, McGill collects compost in residence cafeterias: Royal Victoria College, Bishop Mountain Hall, Carrefour Sherbrooke, Douglas Hall, and New Residence. Some other individual units have also organized compost collection, namely AUS Snax, Première Moisson, Starbucks Carrefour, the Faculty Club, Midnight Kitchen, Thompson House and the MORE houses.

Some pilot projects are also underway to help spread organic waste collection across the campus more widely. Stay tuned!

If your waste is not being properly recycled, you should contact your building porter (you can find their phone number here). If your building has no porter, your district supervisor will be able to help you.

McGill Hazardous Waste Management Services offers special battery collection bins in the lobbies of most major buildings on campus. Otherwise, batteries can be sent using internal mail service to ‘Recycling of materials, Hazardous Waste Management, McIntyre Medical Building, Room 129’. You can find the list of battery bin locations here. Old cellphones can be dropped off or mailed to any Bell World, Espace Bell or Bell Mobility store, where they will be refurbished and donated to women’s shelters. For any other inquiries regarding e-waste, you can contact McGill Hazardous Waste Management at 514-398-5066.  

There are many ways to reduce waste at McGill. As an individual, you can bring reusable containers, mugs, and water bottles with you to avoid purchasing food and beverages in single-use packages. If you work at McGill, consider going through the Sustainable Workplace Certification process, which will challenge you and your team to reduce your waste and improve your overall sustainability. If you work in a wet lab, you can also check out the Sustainable Labs Guide. Lastly, you can host more sustainable events by working with the Sustainable Events consultants. They will walk you through several measures you can take to make your events more environmentally friendly, accessible and inclusive.

While McGill is working on eventually moving towards a campus-wide organic waste collection system, there is currently no centralized organic waste pick-up system like there is for landfill and recycling. However, some units have organized their own collection through a small contract with Compost Montreal. Alternatively, if you have compost collection services at home, you can always collect your organic waste in a container throughout the day and then dispose of it in your brown bin when you get home in the evening.

Unlike the single-bin system you probably have at home, paper should not go into the same bin as plastic, glass and aluminum on the McGill campus. McGill separates their recycling into two streams- there is one bin for paper and cardboard and a second bin for plastic, metal and glass. This ensures that any food or drinks left on recycled containers do not contaminate clean paper, making it unrecyclable.