Can you introduce yourself?
I am Maïwenn Mollet, the Director of the “Les Couches Fertiles” project at The Alchemists.
The Alchemists is a ESUS company (Solidarity Enterprise of Social Utility) created almost 4 years ago. Our job is to collect and compost food waste in urban areas.
- We collect all types of food waste from our customers (restaurants, schools, supermarkets, company canteens, hospitals, etc.)
- We produce standardized compost which is sold to urban agriculture stakeholders or to city dwellers in grocery stores or supermarkets. We thus allow the return of organic matter to the soil and participate in the creation of fertile and living soils in the city.
We are also working on a innovative baby diaper composting project. Today, in France we cremate and bury 3.5 billion baby diapers per year. As this waste is particularly rich in organic matter, at Les Alchimistes, we are seeking to create a separate collection and composting channel for baby diapers.
For 4 years, we have been moving forward on the preliminary stages of creating this sector and we are encouraging diaper manufacturers to develop eco-designed and 100% compostable diapers. For the moment, we are experimenting with collection and composting on a micro-industrial scale with partner nurseries. In 2022, we are targeting the move to industrial scale.
Can you present, to those who do not know you, how your service offering fits directly into the Ministry’s public policies?
Our service offering fits well with the Ministry’s public policies, because it allows us to contribute to the achievement of national and European objectives in terms of waste recovery. In addition, an EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) for disposable sanitary textiles was passed as part of the circular economy law earlier this year (for implementation in 2024). New recovery solutions are therefore essential to finally offer a better end-of-life for baby diapers!
What have been your recent successes in implementing your project?
Over the past year, we experimented with the collection and composting of used diapers with partner daycare centers. We also set up a research consortium with ADEME and partners to address the major technical, health, and environmental questions surrounding diaper composting. Our work confirms that diapers are indeed a waste product that can be transformed into compost, but it also confirms that to obtain quality compost, you need access to eco-designed and compostable diapers. The good news is that diaper manufacturers are making good progress! The initial dream is becoming reality. Our long-standing partner, Celluloses de Brocéliande (a production unit of the Agromousquetaires group), produced the first prototypes of compostable diapers this year, which are already being tested in daycare centers. We believe the baby diaper market will transform in the coming years and that the compostable diaper market could represent 30% of the market by 2030. What are the upcoming challenges your startup/SME is likely to face? The emergence of the diaper composting sector is interdependent on the market launch of compostable diapers. We are therefore currently embarking on a new phase of the project to support diaper manufacturers in the final assessment of the compostability of their diaper models. We are opening a new composting site in Pantin by the end of 2020. We will compost various diaper models, both used and collected locally within a 2km radius. This open-air showcase of the new circular economy loop we hope to establish should also help us develop the regulatory framework within which we will be able to sell compost from compostable diapers in the future. Indeed, there is still some uncertainty regarding the status of compost from compostable items (which will be increasingly numerous on the market in the future) and the possibility of removing it from its waste status in order to sell it, as in any circular economy loop. How have you adapted to the current economic and health crisis?This crisis has certainly disrupted our growth trajectory, but it has also forced us to reassess our priorities.
During the lockdown, our restaurant food waste collection business suffered a major setback. But we took the opportunity to accelerate other projects: household food waste collection, supporting local authorities, and accelerating efforts in sectors least affected by the crisis (healthcare, supermarkets, schools, etc.).
For our diaper composting business, we were forced to stop collections during the daycare closures. But this time, the daycares remain open, so we’re continuing our project as planned! FOLLOW THE ALCHEMISTS ON SOCIAL MEDIA