Founded in Lévis in May 1977, Société VIA has worked in many different sectors, from food production to vehicle registration. It then specialized in office paper recycling in the 1980s and in selective collection in 1992.
Société VIA takes its name from Vie, Intégration et Apprentissage (Life, Integration and Learning). Even today, this name clearly illustrates the mission pursued by the non-profit organization (NPO). For all these years, it has been promoting the skills and interests of over 300 employees on a daily basis, 60% of whom have functional limitations. The latter are mainly dedicated to sorting, operations and quality control tasks.
They are the lifeblood of the company,” says CEO Jean-Sébastien Daigle. Through their commitment, they not only perform essential work for the company, they also do it with skill and dedication. They ensure top-quality processing of recyclable materials, and offer our customers products that are among the best in the industry. Of course, we invest in new equipment to improve quality and efficiency, but this always translates into less physically demanding tasks for employees with functional limitations. Quality of life at work is paramount in our organization. For 45 years, Société VIA has focused on the balance between performance and human well-being. Learning to work together, identifying each person’s strengths through their differences, that’s what we do every day.
Société VIA operates four sorting centers located in Lévis, Québec, Rivière-du-Loup and Saguenay. Thanks to these, it serves more than 200 municipalities for a total of 140,000 tonnes of recycled materials per year, representing 9,800,000 blue bins filled with paper, cardboard, metal, plastic and glass, all of which will be diverted from landfill. Thanks to the expertise of its team and the technology of its equipment, the purity indexes of the products processed by Société VIA are close to 99%.
We want to create maximum value from the materials we valorize, by standing out for the quality of the products we sell,” explains the CEO. To achieve this, we are constantly renewing our ways of doing things, integrating methods and technologies that enable us to adapt to the changing realities of our industry and improve our performance.”
Scheduled to open in summer 2021, the Rivière-du-Loup plant is Société VIA’s biggest investment project to date. The plant serves a very wide customer base, from Montmagny to Kamouraska and Témiscouata. Société VIA wants to spread its expertise throughout Quebec and build long-term relationships of trust with the various Quebec municipalities that share the NPO’s values.
Thank you to everyone who has contributed and continues to contribute to making Société VIA an inclusive place to live. Thanks to all our members and directors, with special thanks to Julie Suzanne Doyon, Chairman of the Board, for her sustained commitment over the past few years. Thanks to Mr. André Poitras, General Manager from 1983 to 2016, who laid the solid foundations that have made Société VIA a place of inclusion for 45 years now.
