“You can’t imagine the mess,” says Karima Lebsir, a Parisian architect specializing in major renovations of residential buildings and head offices. Suffice to say that she has traveled, construction sites, and seen a lot of materials being dumped. Head for recycling channels in the best case, landfill for the worst.
A good part of them are still quite usable, some are even new. “It’s a customer who changes his mind and wants white tiles and no longer gray, a shop that needs to be transformed into housing, a surplus of windows that we don’t know where to store…”, illustrates She. Not to mention the energy renovation projects that are multiplying. “We find ourselves changing the radiators for new ones that meet the latest standards,” she says. But the old ones are often still functional and can render services. »
100 windows on a construction site in the 20th
For Karima Lebsir, it was too much. With Sélim Zouaoui and Jules Loubaresse, they launched in September Cycle Zero, a mobile application that allows individuals to recover non-reused construction materials free of charge. In eight months, Cycle Zéro worked on fifteen construction sites in the capital and recovered 108 tons of materials. “These are often windows, there were a hundred to reuse on our last operation, the energy renovation of an apartment building in the 20th arrondissement, she illustrates. But it can be radiators, sinks, carpentry, tiles, lights…”
The process is always the same. “We start with a survey of the site, which allows us to check the state, list the reusable materials and know the time we have to remove them, explains Karima Lebsir. The selected materials are posted on the application and can then be reserved by individuals. They then receive all the details to pick them up. And what do companies get in return? “The satisfaction of already making an eco-gesture, but also of the avoided greenhouse gas emissions that they can include in their carbon footprint,” continues the co-founder of Cycle Zéro. Above all, bringing in dumpsters to get rid of this waste has a cost for the company that we allow them to reduce. »
Office furniture, another size deposit
It remains to convince these construction companies to join the process. Karima Lebsir says she has to fight to get new jobs. On the other hand, at the other end of the application, on the private side, the demand is there. “Cycle Zero has already been downloaded 150,000 times, we would never have imagined so much so quickly,” she underlines.
This certainty that there is something to be done around reuse in construction is also the conviction of Frédéric Salles, who created Scop3 end of 2021. Previously, the Montpellier resident was at the head of a start-up which, after the Covid-19 and the massive transition to teleworking, went in search of smaller premises. “I found myself with 500 m² of office space too much,” he says. Armchairs, tables, boxes, cupboards, meeting room equipment. Sometimes almost new. Dumping them hurt my heart, but it was the only solution I was offered. »
Hence Scop3, created to connect, throughout France, companies that get rid of professional equipment with those that are looking for it. Not only, by the way. “As the volumes are often large and the time to evacuate them very short, it is necessary to multiply the channels, indicates Frédéric Salles. Part of it is thus offered for sale to companies (and to individuals by the end of the year), for a price at least half as expensive as new. Another is given free of charge to charities. »
42 million tonnes of waste in construction
The renovation of a Bordeaux hotel has thus enabled refugee aid associations to recover 200 beds. “In total, in 2022, we reused 15,000 pieces of equipment, which made it possible to avoid the emission of 650 tonnes of eqCO2”, adds Frédéric Salles. A number he hopes to double this year. The margin for progress of Scope 3 is in any case considerable: “It is estimated that 18 million pieces of equipment are thrown away each year in France”, indicates its co-founder.
Cycle Zéro also has a boulevard in front of it. The building sector produces 42 million tons of waste every yearof which less than 1% is reused, indicates the French Institute for Building Performance (Ifpeb). But things are moving, notes Emmanuelle Ledoux, general manager of the National Institute for the Circular Economy (Inec), which cites other initiatives similar to those of Cycle Zéro and Scop3. ” As Articonnexwhich also recovers building site materials that were destined for the dumpster to reuse them, or even the Waste2Bild project, supported by the metropolis of Toulouse, which accompanies and connects local players in the construction industry to promote reuse on their sites, she lists. THE reuse booster, launched by Ifpeb, seeks to do the same, but this time on a national scale and by bringing together even the major construction players. »
The challenge of scaling up
For Emmanuelle Ledoux, the challenge now is to scale up these initiatives. “In other words, to work on large volumes and guaranteeing maximum predictability,” she explains. Re-employment will not make much money for the actors of the building. This approach must not, therefore, complicate their lives. Clearly, if to find the dozens or even hundreds of second-hand windows that they sometimes need, they have to make dozens of phone calls, they will do it once, not twice. »
However, everything contributes to the increase in reuse in the construction sector. The Anti-waste law for a circular economy (Agec) of February 10, 2020, for example, created a sector Extended producer responsibility (EPR) for building waste, with the aim, among other things, of improving their prevention and management. Frédéric Salles also cites this Agec law, but this time its article 58, which now obliges local authorities to include a minimum of 20% reuse in their supply purchases. “The same constraint would be needed in the private sector,” he says. Not sure that we need it, considers for her part Emmanuelle Ledoux: “With the shortages of materials which have stopped many construction sites since the Covid-19, companies have understood the interest of reuse”.