Meet the team turning marine trash into cash in France

euronews (in English)

"At Sauvage, we are not limited to one idea. We can also innovate. We try, we experiment. It's an everlasting quest to improve the quality of what we do."

Transcript

00:00 I went on a trip.

00:02 I decided to leave Marseille to go to Toulon, to Calamash.

00:10 It was 120km that I did in two weeks.

00:12 I was rather euphoric at the beginning, tired in the middle,

00:18 very depressed the tenth day, because that day we had too many waste.

00:24 I was collecting all the waste that I could find either floating or immersed.

00:27 And then finally happy, the trip was worth it,

00:30 to have recovered 100kg of waste.

00:33 And then we asked ourselves what we were going to do with this waste.

00:37 My name is Manu Lorrain, I am the founder of the association Sauvage Méditerranée.

00:54 Sauvage Méditerranée is an association that revalues the waste collected on the beaches of the Mediterranean.

01:02 We are going to transform this material to make creations.

01:06 The first product we released was actually bracelets.

01:09 We thought, well, why not develop a jewelry range.

01:14 So then we made earrings in recycled plastic,

01:17 necklaces too, with for example, poly green.

01:20 We wanted to offer something pretty, but with a certain value.

01:24 Two years ago, I think, an organizer in Marseille saw our plates

01:32 and asked if there was a way to make trophies with them.

01:35 And in fact, we said, well, we'll try.

01:38 And it finally became a product that worked really well,

01:42 because they take them back every year.

01:46 At the beginning, it was more of frustration.

01:49 I didn't know how to show this problem that I was seeing.

01:54 I prepared myself, it was a real challenge.

01:56 I attended conferences, I trained.

01:58 And then, in fact, it was at that moment that I also started to look at myself,

02:01 to go see other associations.

02:03 The frustration was a real challenge.

02:07 I was a little bit afraid of the fact that I was going to be a part of this.

02:11 So, I went to associations.

02:15 From frustration, we went into action.

02:18 The wild workshop here is a small workshop that we recovered in 2019,

02:25 which was empty and we completely built it from scratch,

02:29 using materials, in particular, recovered either from neighbors before they threw them away.

02:34 We did everything, mostly with recovery objects.

02:39 We tried to find systems to filter and recover water.

02:42 We also chose to make a bike cleaner because it was more ecological

02:45 and more energy-efficient.

02:47 For the thermal compression, it's just a pizza oven that we recovered.

02:53 And the molds are just steel plates.

03:04 I did studies related to plastic processing processes.

03:09 In class, we learned all about the processes of large industries,

03:14 with very industrial machines.

03:16 And it's true that working in an association is not at all the same scale.

03:20 These plugs are washed in the washing machine, in the pedal.

03:28 Then we put them to dry outside.

03:30 Then we sort them, by material and also by color.

03:35 It's perhaps the most tedious of all the steps on recycling,

03:45 sorting the waste.

03:46 It's full of little waste that are sometimes not easy to identify.

03:50 We know that there are some plastics that are more easily revaluable than others.

03:55 For example, they have to heat up to temperatures that are acceptable for us in an oven.

04:00 And there are others that will have to heat up much more.

04:03 Once it's sorted, we grind them into small pieces,

04:08 because it's in this way that it's easier to transform.

04:11 There are two ways to transform them.

04:15 Either in thermal compression,

04:17 where we put the pieces in a mold.

04:21 We put the mold in an oven to melt the pieces.

04:24 Then we press them to make a plate.

04:26 And then we can cut out the shapes in this plate.

04:29 And there is also the injection.

04:33 We put the pieces directly in a preheated space.

04:40 And then we inject them in a mold to have more 3D shapes.

04:45 We have about thirty associations.

04:48 And these associations will give us a part of what they collect.

04:52 Plastic, plastic, polystyrene, boat sails.

04:55 It's really about working locally.

05:01 From the beginning, we have associated ourselves with Sauvage Néy Péranay.

05:04 They have been collecting our corks for six or seven years.

05:06 I love their brand, I'm a big fan.

05:08 And they have also implemented the wild currency.

05:14 How to reward people who come to our pick-ups.

05:17 And every time people come to our pick-ups,

05:19 we give them a wild currency that gives them a discount to one of our partners.

05:23 For this, we had to create a network of partners who accept this currency.

05:30 We would like to have a much larger workshop.

05:33 Even a rather futuristic workshop.

05:36 It could be eco-designed from marine waste.

05:39 We, with Sauvage, do not limit ourselves to an idea.

05:43 We try, we experiment.

05:45 And always in search of improvement in the quality of what we do.

05:49 [Music]

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