What happens to Montrealers' moving day waste?

Next to a shipping container towering over Marie-Anne Street in Montreal's central Plateau neighbourhood, passersby pick through an assortment of furniture laid out under a small white tent.

The items are a selection from the record seven tonnes of furniture and household items the organizationSocit pour l'action, l'ducation et la sensibilisation environnementale de Montral(SAESEM) has collected over the past two weeks via its shipping container depot and home collection service.

They are only a piece of the waste puzzle Quebec's annual July 1 moving day creates in the city, which typically generates an extra 50 tonnes of trash eachyear.

Last year at this time, the organization had collected just two tonnesduring its RebutRcup campaign which started June 19 and ends July 7.

"We're exploding our scores," said Garance Franois, a project manager for SAESEM.

"There aren't many other options. It's super difficult to get rid of furniture in Montreal, aside from selling it on [Facebook] Marketplace."

The group typically redistributes the items to organizations who give them away or sell them at a low cost to people in need, such as asylum seekers.

This time,Franois saysSAESEMcollected so much stuff that they held a kind of garage sale on Marie-Anne and Bordeaux streets.

"The goal is to avoid furniture ending up in the landfill," she said.

RebutRcupcollects most household and clothing items, except for mattress and upholstered furniturelike couches or sofa chairs. The group is currently partnered withPlateau-Mont-Royal, but it is hoping more Montreal boroughs and nearby municipalities will work with them in the future.

Recycling advocate Karel Mnard says he's seeing larger items left on the curb this year.

"Mattresses, pieces of furniture, appliances. It was as if entire households had been thrown onto the street," said Mnard, who is the head of the Front commun qubcois pour une gestion cologique desdchets.

He speculated that rising rents have people moving into smaller apartments, where all their belongings won't fit.

A severe housing crisis in the province has left more than 100 people without homes this July 1in Montreal, and a total of 700 in the province.

Waste winds up in landfill

The City of Montreal says the waste removal from the aftermath of July 1 will take about a week. It's encouraging people to take large items and electronics to the city's eco-centres, open seven days a week from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.

But those big piles lying on the side of the road, only to get soaked in the rain? City spokesperson Philippe Sabourinsays anything that ends up in an unsortedpile on the streetwill likely wind up in a landfill.

"When you have all mixed together items, it's impossible for the city to sort the items. So everything will go to the dump," Sabourin said.

It's not exactly the city that does the sorting, though. Montreal contracts much of its waste collection out to private companies.

And Franois, of SAESEM, says that while eco-centres recycle some materials, such as wood and heavy metals found in electronics, her group wants to simply reduce the amount of stuff that gets thrown out.

The organization makes it easy for people to get rid of items by offering to pick them up and by placing its shipping container in an easy-to-access residential spot, like the corner of Marie-Anne and Bordeaux this year.

She said this makes it easier for those who don't have access to a carto bring items to an eco-centre.

Mnardsays Joliette, a municipality about 75 kilometres northeast of Montreal, found a solution by lending residents an electric pickup truck.

On a trip to the Plateau eco-centre Monday, CBC News observed many people arriving with cars and trucks full of construction materials, as well as some people doing ritual junk purges but no one having recently moved. One couple arriving in a U-Haul were landlords who had just spent six hours clearing waste from previous tenants.

Mnard sayshe gets calls from journalists on moving day every year, and that while the exposure may lead to more awareness of the issue of waste, he longs for the day it's no longer needed.

"Not only are we buying things that don't last long, but if on top of that we're throwing out items that are perfectly fine. One day we're going to pay for this kind of consumption," he said.