Could you briefly describe your association and its objectives?
Our association is called Sauvage Méditerranée (https://sauvage-med.fr). It was created in 2019 and is based in Aix-en-Provence. In other words, the diffuse waste that can be found in nature, and more particularly on the Mediterranean coast, such as plastic, fishing nets, polished glass, boat sails, and so on.
We make creations from this waste, which is collected on the beaches by around thirty partner associations located between Nice and Montpellier.
The aim of these associations is to organise clean-up operations and raise awareness of pollution at sea. When they collect rubbish on the beaches, they give it to us. We make jewellery with trophies and all sorts of creations. We donate ten per cent of our sales to these associations to encourage them in their activities.
How do you sell your creations?
We have an online shop that allows us to sell our jewellery and we also have a partner shop in Marseille that sells it. It’s called Les Flamants verts (https://www.lesflamantsverts.fr), based in Marseille. From time to time we also have stalls at designer fairs and summer markets. This is how we sell our jewellery to private customers.
We also sell to professionals. This is by word of mouth. Companies that hear about us contact us via our website.
Is your association part of any network?
Yes, on the one hand, we do work with partner associations at local and regional level between Nice and Montpellier.
We’re also part of a network called the Precious Plastic network (https://www.preciousplastic.com), which is an international community that makes resources and knowledge available to build your own open source recycling machines. Their platform also provides a forum for discussing the problems that can arise, for example, when transforming plastic. We are one of the founding members of the French branch of Plastique France. There are around thirty workshops in France linked to the Precious Plastic network. These are small workshops like ours, often very small-scale, with no industrial dimension at all.
We meet once a year to exchange ideas. You might think that our activities might be in competition with each other, because we all work with plastic and we all try to create and add value to recycled plastic. But in reality, because we’re fairly spread out in France, we don’t really have any local competition. When it comes to the products we offer, they’re pretty diverse too: some of us make furniture, others signage, jewellery or trophies.
On the whole, we encourage each other. It’s all about sharing our knowledge.
Do you have any other activities apart from making and selling recycled objects?
Apart from making and selling recycled objects, we have a recycling centre with which we work in schools and possibly in companies to raise awareness about sorting by showing how plastics are recycled today.
Instead of receiving the public in our workshop, where there are machines heating up and making noise, we have set up a mobile recycling centre where we go out to meet people.
How does your organisation work? Do you have employees, for example?
The association has three employees (soon to be four). We have two engineers who master the machines. The person who is going to join us will be a development officer, who will help the association to seek funding from the public and private sectors, while at the same time trying to raise our profile in terms of communication with the media.
How do you get started?
On the one hand, we’re self-financing through sales, but we also get help from companies and public subsidies from the region, such as the Méditerranée Zéro Déchet initiative. Having won this call for projects, the region reimburses seventy per cent of the expenses we incur, with a ceiling on the purchase of equipment.
