Archives des Eco-design - CirculAgronomie

Mifactori

Home What is Circular Economy ? Our project The encyclopedia Newsletter Langues Mifactori Web : https://mifactori.de/ Contact : hello@mifactori.de Localisation : Germany Date of meeting : 10 May 2023 Maturity of the projet : Mature Eco-design Recycling Open source A design studio Mifactori is a studio for open circular design based in Berlin. For more than 10 years they have been rethinking design in every possible way: what kind of materials, assembled in what way, for what purpose, produced where ? We had the chance to meet Lars Zimmermann, artist, designer and founder of Mifactori. What is circular design ? Linear design is about extracting resources, turning them into products, using them and then throwing them away, so new resources have to be found to produce them again. In contrast, circular design implements loops based on circular principles such as the 9 R’s : rethink, refuse, reduce, reuse, refurbish, repair, repurpose, rot and recycle. So circular design is about trying to design around these loops : design something that is easy to repair, easy to repurpose, easy to recycle nearby… What is open design ? The idea of open design was born and became popular in the 2000s when the internet really hit the mainstream. Suddenly anyone could create something and share it with the world. Something that in the old world only big companies could do. Many people thought it was possible to apply this to the world of physical objects. Open design is about supporting global making and remaking through easy-to-make, well-documented designs and open licences. Based on this idea, open design is design made in such a way that any designer or non-designer can participate in making and designing new objects : they have to be easy to make, easy to understand and inclusive. “If everyone can understand how to reuse something then more people will reuse it, if more people understand how an object is made, more people can repair it.” Trikka : a platform for open circular design Today’s products are mostly made up of parts that are disposable and custom-made, meaning they can only be used in one particular product. So if one part breaks, the whole product is lost and it’s very difficult to reuse or repair. So why not design products using standard parts that are very easy to make and are also reusable, meaning the same part can work in many different products ? Inspired by Lego and Meccano, the Trikka system was created and all parts in this system are based on the same grid : evenly spaced holes in the parts so they always fit together. The Trikka platform now has 40 products and a catalogue of 120 parts, each of which belongs to at least two different products. Source image : Mifactori So if you have a chair from the Trikka system and a part of it is part of three other products, when the chair doesn’t suit you anymore, you can reuse it in another product which greatly extends the life of each part. What’s more, any designer can come to the platform and find the documentation for a part they like, make it and use it in one of their own designs, and they can also a add new parts to the catalogue : this is open design. With this concept, the catalogue also grows over time and you can have a part that is part of two products one year and two years later, the same part is part of six different products ! Source image : Mifactori What are the side-benefits of such a concept ? There are many very interesting aspects to this Trikka system, both circular and open source. The first one, as Lars explained to us, is that this system could work without centralised manufacturing and boost local makers. For example, if you see a chair you like on the Trikka platform, but you can’t buy it because there’s no manufacturer near you, you’re invited to find your local carpenter, call them and they can go to the website and find perfect documentation of all the parts to make the chair. In this way it could also stimulate local crafters to create more with modularity and stimulate a real loop locally. Another aspect they have with the Trikka system is tolerance : they try to come up with parts that can be made from different materials and sizes and still work together. This really encourages the use of local resources, the reuse of leftover materials that don’t necessarily have the right shape and form, but can still fit. Less precision in materials and sizes also allows for simpler hand tools, making it more affordable. Finally, one of the most important side effects, in our opinion, is that it stimulates creativity. As customers, we’re not used to being asked to redesign or rethink products in order to create others. Seeing products not as one piece, but as a multitude of parts that can be taken apart and reused in different ways, allows the user or designer to create and imagine more. Back to encyclopedia Our other articles on the same topics Madaster Les Pailles de Provence La Fumainerie Toopi Organics Newsletter CirculAgronomie Facebook Youtube Linkedin Instagram Copyright CirculAgronomie 2020

Madaster

Home What is Circular Economy ? Our project The encyclopedia Newsletter Langues Madaster Web : https://madaster.com/ Contact : info@madaster.com Localisation : Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Austria Date of meeting : 20 april 2023 Maturity of the projet : Mature Eco-design Recycling Digitalization Eliminate waste from the construction sector Created six years ago, Madaster is an international scale-up steering the construction sector towards a circular economy. Their purpose is to eliminate waste from the construction sector through digitalization and with the spreading of a new concept : the material passport. Born in the Netherlands, currently active in 5 further countries – Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, Norway and Austria – and growing, they are at the forefront of the transition toward a circular economy in one of the most waste-intensive industry sectors. We had the chance to meet Martijn Oostenrijk, one of the co-founder of Madaster and now managing director of the company. The construction sector : CO2-, resource- & waste-intensive The construction sector creates more than 247 millions of tons of waste each year in France, making this sector responsible for more than 70% of all waste generated [1]. In the Netherlands, Martijn explains that this statement is not much different : in the linear system, with a take-make-waste point of view, 40% of the materials end up as degenerated stuff and lost for future use. Moreover, carbon dioxide emissions linked to the construction sector reached 10 Gt in 2021, for a global total of 37 Gt : almost a third of all global emissions [2]. Those numbers make it clear that the construction sector really is a big part of the climate and waste issues. However it is not new information that the building industry is not the greener one, so why is it still so ? For Martijn, it is mainly due to the construction sector being very conservative and late in the digital transformation, in combination with the fact that finance still rules our world and financial people don’t understand that materials are valuable in essence. Facing those challenges, Thomas Rau, a pioneering Dutch architect and author of the book “Material Matters”, approached Martijn Oostenrijk and Pablo van den Bosch, then working in the finance industry, to help him explain that circularity comes with financial benefits and value : Madaster was born. Image source : RAU, Triodos Bank “Ok this makes a difference, this is important, this is urgent and here we can make change” What is Madaster ? Madaster is an online platform, and like the land register, one can register all materials and products in their built environment, whether it is real estate or infrastructures. Once those materials are registered, they are provided with an identity. In the end, the aim is to extend this platform at a major scale so that it could be able to register any objects anywhere in the world. “Giving them an identity means that we can make conscious decisions about their future use instead of degrading those materials into a waste stream.” The importance of digitalization The construction sector has certain industry standards all architects, construction companies and engineers work with. Among those standards is something called the Building Information Management or BIM, that is the digitalization of a building. It contains all the different materials and products that are assembled in the product. Along with that is the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) : defined by the ISO, it enables each company producing a product to quantify environmental information on the life cycle of this product to enable comparisons between products fulfilling the same function. Each year, legislation increases the demand for such declarations. Hence, combining the BIM where “everything you can imagine in a building is captured” with the EPD of the products inside the building, enriching it with all kinds of environmental and financial data from trustworthy sources, Madaster creates many precious environmental and financial indicators for their clients, such as circularity index, detachability, embodied carbon or financial residual value. The circularity index Based on the Ellen Mc Arthur methodology, the circularity index is constructed based on three stages : the development stage, the use stage and the end-of-life stage. Within those tree stages, if more existing materials are used instead of virgin, that’s a plus in the development stage ; if the construction and the materials used during the construction phase lead up to a longer lifespan than the average, then that’s a plus, and if it was constructed in a way that it can be detached from the building for reuse, that’s a plus. The combination of those three stages leads to a circularity index between 0 and 100 and the score is penalized if information is missing. The financial residual value It is the value of a building at the end of its life : what materials can be reused, what’s the cost of reusing these materials ? Current and historical prices of each material in the building have been looked upon to create a line toward and guess their price in the future. Then, deducting the cost of removing, transporting and processing these materials for reuse, we can have the real financial residual value of a building. If materials are assembled in a way that they are easily detachable, it will lower the cost of processing it and increase the financial residual value of a building. “When we calculate the residual value of materials in a building, we want it to be really high because that incentify the user to get that steel bar out and sell it for reuse.” Whom is Madaster made for ? As a self-service platform, everyone can start working with Madaster simply by registering to an annual subscription : 900 €/year for businesses and 20€/year for private persons. The entire value chain of construction is invited to use Madaster. From the asset owners (governmental body, major investor, house owners) to the building team and finally the accelerators such as banks, insurance companies and so on. The latter will

Toopi Organics

Toopi Organics Sustainable supply Eco-design Industrial and territorial ecology Recycling FRANCE Web : https://toopi-organics.com/ Contact: contact@toopi-organics.com Localisation: Loupiac-de-la-Réole (33) Sector: Recycling Date of creation: 2019 Date of meeting : 21/04/021 Maturity of the project : Mature Valorise human urine into products for agriculture and industry. Overview History of the project Toopi Organics was created in 2019 after a meeting between three entrepreneurs. Matthieu Préel, manager of the company « Un Petit coin de Paradis » was daily confronted with the problem of recycling human urine. Through his dry toilet rental business, he has to pay to dispose of the urine he has collected. Michael Roes, founder of a biological fertiliser company, and Pierre Huguier, a doctor in soil ecotoxicology, have therefore developed a microbiological process to recycle urine into products for agriculture and industry. The company is currently developing its first product and hopes to have it on the market in the first half of 2022. Key numbers 1L of urine = 1L of finished product Goal to collect 1% of the urine generated in France Pilars of circular economy Sustainable supply Eco-design by developing a low-tech system for urine recovery. Industrial and territorial ecology through the linking of different actors in the same territory. Upstream actors for the collection of urine and downstream actors for whom the products are intended. Recycling of urine and its use as an agricultural input. How the project works ? To listen to Benjamin present the project, you can watch the video at the bottom of the article! 1. Urine, from waste to resource? Urine is actually seen as a waste product. It is eliminated via toilets and then treated with all sewage in purification plants. However, this current model has its limits. It poses problems for the sustainable management of water resources. On average, a flush consumes 9 litres of drinking water, which represents 10,000 litres per year and per person, or 20% of our annual water consumption. When water is treated in wastewater treatment plants, ⅔ of the nitrogen is released into the air and ⅓ into the water. Only 5% of the nitrogen in sewage sludge is recycled, which means that most of the nitrogen ends up in the wastewater. It should be noted that all the nitrogen consumed by humans is excreted, which represents 5 kg of nitrogen per person in one year. Because of its high nitrogen content, sewage sludge is the cause of eutrophication. Urine is mainly composed of water and contains a triptych of minerals that are very interesting for agriculture: the NPK triptych. Urine contains a significant concentration of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), which play an important role in soil fertilisation. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) 2. From collection to urine recovery Toopi Organics sees itself as the final player in the urine recovery chain. One of the challenges is to collect a significant quantity of high-quality urine. Urine collection is currently done locally and is set up with various partners: WCLoc, local partners: WCLoc, local authorities via the installation of dry urinals (male and female) in Langon and La Réole and medical analysis laboratories in Gironde. Other collection sites are being considered to recover large volumes: establishments open to the public (ERP), and toilets at motorway or construction site rest areas, for example. To ensure that the urine is of good quality, the Toopi Organics team adds lactic acid to the urine collection tanks. Lactic acid stabilises the urine and the degradation of urea into ammonia, a molecule that is responsible, among other things, for unpleasant odours. To ensure that the urine is of good quality, the collectors must carry out the following checks before shipping: pH test at different depths of the tank, colour test, etc. If all the conditions are correct 24 hours before shipping, the urine can be shipped. To ensure that the urine is of good quality, the collectors must carry out the following checks before shipping. If all the conditions are correct 24 hours before shipping, the urine can be shipped. Further tests are carried out on receipt of the product. If the urine is not of the expected quality, it is sent to a treatment plant for processing. The recovery of urine into biostimulant is done in a low-tech process. A bacterial strain of interest and a carbon source are inoculated into the urine, which is kept at 30 to 40°C. This low-tech process ultimately makes it possible to offer a product whose purchase cost is much lower than the current market price. Titre de va-et-vient test test Sustainable developement approach Environemental benefits Urine reclamation has a number of advantages as it leaves the water treatment process. Firstly, the use of waterless urinals, which are necessary for urine recovery, enables a more sustainable management of water resources. In addition, taking urine out of the water cycle can solve the problem of its disposal in wastewater treatment plants. It is still complicated to treat urine properly, particularly because of its high nitrogen concentration, which is responsible for eutrophication. Finally, the urine recovery process is low-tech, consuming very little energy. Economical benefits The combination of the use of human urine and this low-tech process makes it possible to offer farmers a much cheaper product. Reproductibility and development perspectives Development perspectives Toopi Organics expects to have its first product on the market in the first half of 2022. The processing capacity of the current plant is 400,000 litres, the next one will have a capacity of 2 million litres. Toopi Organics aims to develop its model throughout the country with the installation of processing sites in areas with more than 1 million litres of collection. Harvesting will take place within a 200km radius of the plant to avoid transport costs and pollution. Toopi Organics wants to diversify its product range over the years. Back to the encyclopedia Newsletter CirculAgronomie Subscribe Facebook Youtube Linkedin Instagram Legal information Copyright CirculAgronomie 2020

Les Marmites Volantes

Les Marmites Volantes Sustainable Supply Responsible consumption Eco-design Recycling FRANCE Web: www.marmitesvolantes.fr Contact: commercial@marmitesvolantes.fr Localisation: Paris (75) Sector: Catering Date of creation: 2012 Date de meeting: March 2021 Maturity of the project: Mature Overview Summary of the project Les Marmites Volantes is a responsible catering project initiated by its 4 founders in 2011 with the objective of offering tasty and convivial meals while being in line with the ecological transition. Today, Les Marmites Volantes has two restaurants (Paris XIXth and Montreuil), delivery in companies and a canteen service for elementary schools in Paris and its suburbs and an EHPAD. In addition, the Marmites Volantes are also four commitments: a sustainable supply. an optimized waste management with a sorting of bio-waste and a zero waste solution thanks to the use of returnable containers. the use of soft mobility. All deliveries are made using electrically assisted bicycles. a social commitment, including inclusive recruitment, training and internal promotion. The company is recognized by the ESUS label: Entreprise Solidaire d’Utilité Sociale One of the objectives is to show that it is possible to do catering differently. The company now has four activities: Catering in 2 restaurants (Jaurès and Montreuil) Deliveries to companies Collective catering in 12 private schools and an Ehpad since the Covid crisis. The first deliveries began in 2018, with the installation in 2020 of a production laboratory in the La Chapelle district of Paris, dedicated for schools. Cafeteria launched in early March 2021 at in the School of Decorative Arts. More contracts in collective catering were accepted during the health crisis due to the development of telecommuting in companies. Here is an overview of the distribution of activities post -covid and during the covid: Post: 40% collective / 40% companies / 20% restaurantDuring: 55% collective (school + EHPAD) / 15% companies / 40% restaurant Zoom on the label ESUS [1] The ESUS (Entreprise Solidaire d’Utilité Sociale) approval is part of the 2014 law on social and solidarity economy aiming at the implementation of an environment favorable to the development of social and solidarity economy companies. The conditions for obtaining the ESUS label are as follows: pursue a social utility as a main objectiveto prove that this search for social utility has an impact on the company’s income statement or profitabilitya remuneration policy that respects the following 2 rulesthe average of the 5 best paid employees/managers cannot exceed an annual ceiling of 7 times the minimum wagethe compensation paid to the highest paid employee of the company may not exceed an annual ceiling of 10 times the minimum wage – the company’s shares must not be traded on a financial market Certain companies known as “full rights” are not subject to the conditions for obtaining approval, except for the condition that they are not listed on a financial market. Duration of validity : Once delivered, the ESUS approval is valid for a period of 5 years. This duration is limited to 2 years for companies whose creation date is less than 3 years before the date of the application. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version) Key figures 2 restaurants (Jaurès and Montreuil) 4 historic engagements In 3 years, 4T of packaging avoided thanks to the kettles In 7 years: 80000 km travelled by bike 50% of jobs are the result of internal promotion 25 employees Pillars of circular economy Sustainable supply of resources with the establishment of short circuit with products coming directly from producers (35% of food). These “direct producers” foods come from the Ile de France, the Hauts de France and the Mayenne… For the rest of the products, the Marmites Volantes use small intermediaries such as Terroirs d’Avenir, Zingam or Biocoop Restauration. The electricity supplier was also chosen to be in agreement with the values of the Marmites Volantes; it is Enercoop which guarantees an electricity produced from renewable energy. Eco-design with the use of second-hand furniture for the restaurant rooms. For example, the restaurant tables were made with recycled materials. The wood of the old counter will be transformed into shelves. Responsible consumption with a sustainable supply, seasonal products from short circuits. The delivery of the dishes is also done according to an objective of soft mobility. The three deliverymen, employees of the company, use electric bikes for all deliveries (private and collective). Les Marmites Volantes takes its name from the use of returnable containers: marmites. These containers guarantee the reuse of the latter and thus the end of single-use containers. Recycling with the sorting of bio-waste and the composting of the latter. project functioning 1. Responsible procurement The first commitment of the co-founders of Les Marmites Volantes is to a sustainable supply of resources. The choice is made to work with producers whose production methods we know and to use raw and seasonal products. 35% of deliveries are made directly to the producers. 90% of the fruits and vegetables are organic, but beyond the label, it is common sense that prevails. Many partnerships are historical, like the one with the market gardeners “Le BioGardin” with whom they work hand in hand since the creation of the flying pots. A small overview of the different suppliers: Fruits and Vegetables : Le BioGardin, market gardeners located in Oise, Le Zingam, Terroir d’Avenir and the Coop Bio d’Ile de France. Meat: Meignan for pork, Château-Neuf meat in the Hauts de France and Roule ma Poule for poultry (in Seine-et-Marne) Creamery and eggs: Goncourt cheese factory, Beillevaire and the brin d’herbe dairy in Normandy. Cereals and legumes: Biocoop catering Bread: La conquête du pain, based in Montreuil Micro Pousse: the urban farmer Coffee: the Belleville and Barbès coffee shops Beer : the brewery of the being and the brewery of the golden drop The electricity supply of the two restaurants is done with Enercoop, a French supplier of electricity of 100% renewable origin. Enercoop is recognized as a “truly green” supplier by Greenpeace and Premium by the Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME). [2] 2. Course of a typical day Catering

Pousse-Pousse

A zero waste box that is fun and eco-friendly !

Vépluche

Vépluche is an example of a circular economy solution applied to bio-waste from collective and commercial catering.

The proposed offer is twofold: a free collection of bio-waste and in return for which restaurant owners commit to buying fruits and vegetables proposed by Vépluche.
The collection and distribution of the products is done according to zero-carbon logistics, with the application of the zero-carbon last kilometer rule. To do this, Vépluche uses a super-cargo bike and an electric van to ensure food distribution and waste collection with a reduced carbon footprint.

The bio-waste is composted in their plant based in Châtillon to be transformed into compost, sold in particular to Parisian florists and the city.