It will be possible to toast the Canadian’s health in glasses made of Saguenay aluminum starting this season at the Bell Centre.
A partnership concluded between the Montreal Canadiens and Rio Tinto provides for the replacement of single-use plastic containers which are now banned in Montreal with aluminum glasses which can be recycled.
The two companies, whose offices are neighbors in the city center and which are already partners in several causes, sealed this new agreement on Wednesday during an event which included a visit to the Canadian’s locker room.
Sébastien Ross, general manager of Atlantic operations at Rio Tinto Aluminum, will remember it fondly, having been a lifelong supporter of the club. “It was my first visit to the locker room. I come from Bas-Saint-Laurent, but it has been my club since childhood,” he confided.
The glasses in which the beer and other drinks offered at the Bell Center will be served will be made of aluminum ingots produced in Saguenay and identified as such by a QR code. However, they will not be 100% Quebecois, since the ingots will pass through two companies located in the United States, Novalis and Ball, in Georgia and Kentucky respectively, to be laminated and transformed into glasses. This is the same route taken by all aluminum cans sold in Quebec.
Once emptied by Bell Center customers, the glasses will be recovered and must return to the United States to be recycled, since there is no way to do this in Quebec.
That could change, specifies Sébastien Ross. The company has a post-consumer aluminum recycling project in development that could potentially save a trip to the empty cups at the Bell Center.
The partnership between Rio Tinto and the Bell Center is for a period of five years.
Thanks to Quebec electricity, Rio Tinto can produce aluminum with a low carbon footprint, which helps the CH Group reduce its own, commented Daniel Trottier, its executive vice-president and head of operations and infrastructure.
The containers come in four sizes and their use will eliminate 24 tonnes of plastic per year. That’s the equivalent of a fully loaded large truck, according to both companies. The new glasses bearing their logos will be offered to amphitheater customers by the end of 2023.
Will replacing plastic with aluminum increase the price of beer sold at the Bell Centre? “That’s the part I don’t control,” Sebastian Ross replied.
