- The peelings, the piece of meat left on the side of the plate, the coffee grounds, unsold food, or even the bouquets left on the arms of florists ... Organic waste weighs heavily in the total weight of our garbage.
- And their current recovery - most often incineration or storage - is far from ideal, says Alexandre Guilluy, co-founder of Alchimistes.
- The start-up diverts part of this waste to make compost ready to feed plants and enrich degraded soils. Other players are on this niche. But we are still far from what we could and should do.
Outdated foodstuffs, fruits and vegetables too damaged to be given to associations and the orange peels of the juice machine available to customers ... Such was the collection of the day, this Thursday, at the Franprix supermarket in Réaumur street , in Paris, for the Alchemists. For the past year, the company has been collecting bio-waste from a dozen of the brand's stores in the capital. At the rate of two passages per week.
Then head to an industrial wasteland on L'île-Saint-Denis, about ten kilometers away. This is where the Alchemists perform their sleight of hand: making organic waste of all kinds of compost. Allow a week of transformation, assesses Guillaume Morel, agricultural engineer at the Alchemists. Time to grind and squeeze the bio-waste, mix it with wood shavings and immerse it in the composter, where it will be slowly degraded by bacteria.
"We spend more energy burning a banana peel than it creates"
The result is a jet black powder, ready to feed plants and give life to degraded soils. "The circle is then complete," said Alexandre Guilluy, co-founder and president of the Alchemists. What is born from the ground eventually returns to it. "
The new black gold of cities? The raw material is abundant in any case. "Our food waste - typically peelings or leftovers from meals - represents 30% of the 260 kg of household waste that the French generate per year and per inhabitant," begins Chloé Mahé, engineer in the "mobilization and recovery of waste" department at the '' Environment and Energy Management Agency (Ademe). And it is only for individuals, resumes Alexandre Guilluy. To this must be added the organic waste produced by professionals. "
The catch is that, in the vast majority of cases, this organic matter ends up in our gray garbage cans, mixed with other waste. Gray garbage cans which then take the direction either of the incinerator, or of a hazardous waste storage facility [new term to say landfill!]. This is the mess, explains Alexandre Guilluy. "Storing these bio-waste amounts to doing nothing about it, and burning them has no more interest, since they mainly consist of water," he says. It takes more energy to burn a banana peel than it creates. "
700 tonnes of waste which makes 150 to 200 tonnes of compost
The Alchemists then divert part of it. Seven hundred tonnes of organic waste are processed per year at the L'Île-Saint-Denis site alone, collected from restaurants [including the Cojean chain], canteens, supermarkets [Biocoop, New Robinsons, Franprix ] and even florists. "They make it possible to produce 150 to 200 tonnes of compost," says Guillaume Morel. A part is used a few meters further, in the horticultural greenhouses of the integration site of the association Halage. Another is sold to Parisian players in urban agriculture, such as Topager for its rooftop farms. But for a few weeks, the bags of soil of the Alchemists are also found on sale in Franprix supermarkets.
So much for Paris. But the Alchemists are also present in Lyon, Toulouse, Toulon, Marseille, Lille and La Réunion. "Pending Nantes normally before the end of the year," announces Alexandre Guilluy. In total, that makes 200 customers, to date only professionals, private companies or communities. "
The Alchemists are not the only players in this niche. Chloé Mahé has between twenty and thirty other companies that specialize in the collection and composting of organic bio-waste in the city, often those of restaurants *, "without counting the big players in the world of waste who also set up composting channels".
Far from the 2024 goal of treating 100% of our bio-waste
Nevertheless, "we are still very very far from what we could and what we should do," said Alexandre Guilluy. Since 2016, public and private professionals who generate more than 10 tonnes of organic waste per year have the obligation to sort them at source in order to recycle them. A course quickly reached, to listen to François Alarcon, Director of Strategy and Innovation at Franprix. "Some of our stores reach 10 tonnes per year only with the orange peels from their juice machines," he says.
However, the professionals concerned are still far from sorting and recycling their bio-waste. "The law is not sufficiently known, companies do not always have the space to sort their bio-waste, and there are still too few offers of organic waste collection in the territories and these are relatively expensive Explains Chloé Mahé. And what will happen on January 1, 2024? On this date, the objective that France and Europe have set themselves is to sort at source and recover all of our organic waste, including that generated by individuals. "Only 150 inter-municipal organizations currently offer a bio-waste collection service for the thousand that exist," says the engineer from Ademe.
A card to play in town for the composting sector
Clearly: we will have to accelerate. It's not all about composting to find a way out. "The other major way of recovery is anaerobic digestion," continues the engineer from Ademe. The principle is to produce methane from the fermentation of bio-waste, a gas which then makes it possible to produce electricity by cogeneration. The process generates heat which can be reinjected into heating circuits, but also, at the end of the chain, digestate, a residue of organic matter which, like compost, can be used as fertilizer. "
In other words, three birds with one stone. "This is the big advantage of anaerobic digestion," says Chloé Mahé. But the sector is less flexible than that of composting. For example, it needs relatively fixed amounts of biowaste from week to week. Composting has the advantage of being more flexible and less greedy in place. "We only occupy 900m² at Ile-Saint-Denis to process 700 tonnes per year," highlights Guillaume Morel. All with little nuisance, since composting is done in a closed environment. "
This is why the sector has a good card to play in urban areas. To the Alchemists, in any case, we say that the playing field is large enough to flourish. "Not only is there a lot of bio-waste to collect, but one of the big challenges of tomorrow will also be to green cities," recalls Alexandre Guilluy. What our compost can help. "
Soon a horse collection in Stains
The Alchemists are therefore gradually preparing to increase their power. Around Paris, a new Alchemists' site is to open in Chilly-Mazarin (Essonne) in the coming weeks, and others should follow in Pantin and Stains (Seine-Saint-Denis). “The idea is to have a maximum of six kilometers between the places of waste collection and those of transformation, explains Alexandre Guilluy. It is only in this way that our activity is economically viable. On the collection too, the Alchemists widen their field of action, by gradually opening up to bio-waste from individuals. "We have just launched a system of voluntary contribution kiosks in Marseille, in partner stores, where individuals can deposit their organic waste," continues Alexandre Guilluy. The same system will soon see the light of day in Ile-de-France. "
The start-up intends to go even further at Clos-Saint-Lazare, a sensitive neighborhood in the city of Stains. From September, the Alchemists will collect the bio-waste from the inhabitants ... on horseback.
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* It's Sikle in Strasbourg, La Tricyclerie in Nantes, Compostons in Montpellier, Moulinot in Ile-de-France…
- Food waste
- Biodiversity
- Agriculture
- Waste
- Food
- Planet