Beneficial Use of Pulp and Paper Residuers for Soil Amendment in the Province of Quebec, 1998 Environmental Conference Proceedings

Jacques Leclerc

James Maclaren Industries Inc

Alain Liard

Domtar Innovation Center

Florent Villeneuve

Abitibi-Consolidated Inc

Louis Désilets

Quebec Forest Industries Association

Over the last 3 years, the beneficial use of pulp and paper sludges increased from 3.9 % of the total amount generated in the province of Quebec to more than 20%. In early 1994, the Quebec Forest Industries Association (QFIA) formed a sub-committee dedicated to the promotion of the use of pulp and paper residues in agriculture, sylviculture, horticulture and reclamation of degraded sites, where landfilling (41.1%) and burning (56.2%) were the most common manners to dispose of all types of residues at that time. Facing a lack of guidelines and standards in that field, the QFIA joined the Quebec Ministry of Environment and Wildlife (MEF) in a government/industry working group with the objective to set a series of criteria and good management practices to facilitate the beneficial use of pulp and paper residues as soil amendments. In 1997, after 3 years, the work in partnership with all interested parties resulted in the characterization of sludges from 45 mills, modeling and monitoring, and pilot and full scale trials. After only one season of experimentation with the provisional criteria and good management practices, more than 575,000 wet metric tons of residues were beneficially used. This is just a beginning of the total potential use of residues for soil amendments. Some issues are still under discussion with the environmental authorities concerning temporary winter storage in the field and the classification of the sludges according to their potential pathogenic content.