Nothing is lost, everything is transformed. With a lot of imagination and a bit of technique, it is clear that almost everything can be recycled. If this goes without saying for certain materials, such as steel, it is also true for other, more unusual ones. And the Braderie de Lille, which has just ended, is an excellent laboratory for recycling weird stuff. 20 minutes has prepared for you a small “top 5” of the most improbable transformations.
Furniture molds
If your cousin Michel is convinced that he can be reincarnated as a batrachian, why couldn’t a seafood be reincarnated in a public bench? Moreover, it is even more probable in the second case than in the first. Since 2018, during the world-famous Braderie de Lille, a company has been recovering the shells of the mussels served by the tons to millions of visitors. 20 minutes mentioned this initiative when it was only an experiment. “We have passed this stage today, it has become recurrent”, assures 20 minutes Hope Fenzi, the boss of Westerial, the company that collects the shells.
Recycling shellfish husks makes a material used for all sorts of things. “We make urban furniture, basins, candle jars or even tiles out of it,” he explains. In addition to the sale of the sale, about four tons each year, Westerial also gets supplies from restaurants in the Bay of Somme, an abundant and regular supply. And if the recycling process is expensive, between 600 and 700 euros per ton, “it is a profitable activity today”, insists Espérance Fenzi.
The ocean deposit
The marine environment is a huge deposit of materials to be recycled, both natural and man-made. If we take the Braderie de Lille as an example, bargain hunters may have noticed the inscription appearing on the ecocups in which they tasted their beer. “Le p’tit vert”, a cup “designed from bio plastic algae”, was offered in many bars and stands, for an extra euro and reusable at will throughout the weekend.
In another genre, a Northerner launched her brand of beachwear in 2018, the raw material of which is plastic waste recovered from the oceans. More recently, it was a resident of the Oise this time who embarked on the manufacture of swimsuits woven with nylon from fishing nets recovered from the bottom of the seas.
The pee that makes you grow
Another experiment was to be carried out during the Braderie de Lille and recovering the urine of the bradsmen to make fertilizer for the green spaces of the municipality. The idea had been launched in 2019 for a test the following year, but that was without counting on the Covid-19 epidemic and the cancellation of the event two years in a row.
If the initiative fell through, that does not mean that the ambition was far-fetched. Far from there. The SCOP Ecosec, which had to take care of thousands of liters of pee from bradois, has developed a process that works perfectly to enhance urine by fertilising. Either directly from the producer to the consumer, by irrigating the plants with a buried drip, or through a process for recovering the nutrients (phosphorus and potassium) present in the precious liquid. It’s not so extraordinary by the way, and urine collectors are now installed everywhere according to AdemeFuturoscope, colleges, high schools, sports facilities…
Multi-purpose butts
Smoking kills and cigarette butts pollute. Saturated with toxic substances, trailing an old smell of late-night ashtrays, cigarette filters are nothing to dream about. However, they are still recyclable. 20 minutes had mentioned the Lille start-up Tchao mégots, whose process made it possible to transform cigarette butts into insulating material, used in particular in the lining of down jackets.
But the recycling of industrial filters does not stop there. Another company, Smoky, derives a material from it to make interior furniture or stuffing for cushions. “Mego! » turns it into street furniture, « Eco mégot » into awareness panels…