An alternative shop to give value back to objects

Project details

  • Main leader : Pôle d’Activités et d’Innovations Sociales et Solidaires (PA-ISS)
  • Type of initiative : Individual initiative (company, etc.)
  • Périmètre : Isère
  • Localisation : 39 Grande Rue 38160 Saint-Marcellin
  • Date de début : janvier 2015

Economy circular topics

  • Extending useful service life
  • Responsible consumption
  • Functional service economy
  • Industrial and regional ecology
  • Recycling
  • Eco-design
  • Sustainable procurement
Description

PA-ISS is in charge of a “Recycl'Eco” recycling plant, located near Saint Marcellin, on the site of the Saint Marcellin-Vercors-Isère inter-communal authority recycling centre. In this room, new or nearly new objects, such as clothes, lamps, books, decoration, crockery, bicycles, furniture, etc. are brought every day by users who hope that their donations will be used for purposes other than being buried as landfill.

A team of employees, with support from technical supervisors, sorts, cleans, repairs and sells this random collection of things in its shop, in existence since 2011, on the same site.

Since it opened Recycl'Eco offers a multitude of small and large objects all deriving from these voluntary contributions and a special effort is made with sales prices to satisfy all budgets. However, quality is assured and continuous improvement of products and organisation remains a major objective. As proof of this, many bargain hunters and antique dealers come regularly to hunt out good deals.

In late 2015, with the steadily increasing influx of items, some of which arrive still in their packaging, Alter Mag opened up in the centre of Saint-Marcellin. The shop makes the most of the high quality of the contributions in a very limited space.

In addition to adding value to these items that are being upgraded from the status of waste to that of sellable objects, it also helps to liven up the town centre of the central town of the South Grésivaudan area, providing a friendly location where people can come to hunt out little treasures with friends, talk to the staff and choose a book from the “biblio-fridge”, a refrigerator that has been made over by the children from the outdoor centre and converted into a library, where people can take, leave and exchange lots of books.

  • Objective: bring writing and reading within reach of everyone!

The customers of both shops are economical, sober, informed and responsible consumers, wanting to promote reuse via the circular economy and the social economy, particularly through integration by economic activity for people without jobs. So even though the objective is an environmental one (to promote reuse by giving a second life to objects considered as waste) it is also societal: to make users aware of the importance of “producing and consuming differently”, to participate in social cohesion by creating links, by mixing cultures and boosting local commerce. 

    • Objective: propose alternative economic, social and environmental initiatives by taking an operational role in local dynamics and in the art of living well together.

Last but not least, these shops help the staff who work there to become more professional: they were created to offer them the opportunity to express their skills and talents through meaningful activities; to promote and sell at affordable prices textiles and many different kinds of objects that are being re-used rather than being sent to landfill, thereby helping towards the sustainable development of the area.

Helped by professionals in the field of integration through economic activity, women and men aged 18 to 55 work to improve their employability in order to return to the ordinary job market, from which they have often been excluded by exogenous reasons. Going beyond their own desires, interests and motivations, thus breaking the infernal spiral of forced inactivity.

                  • Objective: restore active and participative citizen status and a sense of future prospects to all the “outsiders” of the current labour market

Qualitative benefits

The turnover of Alter Mag and Recycl'Eco has been gradually increasing since they opened. The objective is not to generate profits to be paid out to shareholders who do not even exist, but to maintain and sustain a tool for integration within the area for its inhabitants, while displaying healthy finances and therefore being less dependent on increasingly limited grants from municipalities. Increasing investment capacity allows continuous improvement in terms of working conditions for employees and possible responses to the problem of concerted and intelligent waste management.

The shops and the initiative as a whole provide several gains:

  • Economic: They contribute to the turnover of the Workshop as an integration project, and the system as a whole contributes more generally to the financial health of the integration system, a modest economic player but one that exists in its own right within the area.
  • Social: they contribute to the employment of vulnerable people. They are closely connected and complementary to each other. They provide a meeting place for multiple cultures, and they give affordable pleasure by allowing as many people as possible to “have fun”. With Alter Mag, they help to liven up the centre of Saint-Marcellin which, like many town centres, has been weakened by the development of outlying commercial areas.
  • Environmental: by reuse and use of the circular economy, they encourage sobriety and economy of resources.

Stages of the initiative

2011: Creation of Recycl'Eco Recycling with a shop on the same site

2015: Alter Mag opens in the town centre

2016: Joins the Ressourceries Network

2018: Alter Mag develops and expands by opening a second area adjacent to the shop; it becomes part of the inter-communal authority projects for building a recycling plant sized to the needs of the area, offering decent, safe working conditions for the staff who work there

Strengths: PA-ISS is involved in local dynamics, well positioned and recognised in the South Grésivaudan area in the centre of the Isère department, which is taking an active part in the social economy, in integration through economic activity and in the circular economy.

Obstacle: Financial investment capacity; a balance needs to be struck between economic requirements and social mission

Areas of activity

  • Trade

Resources

  • Use
  • Textiles
Implementation

Technical resources

  • Premises made available by the local authority on site of the waste disposal facility
  • A store and premises are rented in the town centre
                  • Vehicles are made available by a communications company to transport equipment

Human resources

PA-ISS has a team of ten permanent staff (director, coordinator, technical supervisors, integration professional, administrative and accounting staff)

Financers

  • DIRRECCTE
  • Direction régionale des entreprises, de la concurrence, de la consommation, du travail et de l'emploi (Regional directorate for business, competition, consumer affairs, work and employment)


  • Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes

  • Conseil départemental de l’Isère

  • Saint-Marcellin Vercors Isère Communauté
  • South Grésivaudan inter-communal authority

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Author of the page

Brigitte BRIEL