Social and Employment
Place
Vendôme, France
Sponsor
Laurent Aze
Grant
15,000 € to the Selection Committee at 2009/01/27
Project leader
Régie de Quartier de Vendôme
« I'm very happy with the grant that the Veolia Foundation is making to Régie de Quartier de Vendôme. Its project enlists the population in the battle against the exclusion of employees in difficulty, and it includes an undeniable ecological aspect. Besides, the Régie, created in 1992 and strongly backed by the municipality since then, has amply demonstrated its capacity to last and to thrive. »
Laurent Azé
Since 1992, Régie de Quartier de Vendôme has been setting up workforce development operations for persons in serious difficulty. At the same time, it checks that its various operations significantly improve the quality of life of the inhabitants of the northern neighbourhoods of Vendôme. Régie de Quartier thus takes charge of the upkeep of open spaces, certain reconditioning jobs (especially painting), janitor services for the common areas of buildings, the upgrading of bulky items and the recovery of worn clothing. The latter activity has led it to inaugurate Frip'Art, a workshop specialized in collecting and recycling used textiles.
Power connections made with bits ... of textile
Until 2008, Frip'Art worked on collections made from four containers installed in the town, which enabled it to recover some thirty tons of clothing per year.
But after observing that the market was set to grow exponentially, Régie de Quartier now wants to expand this collection, by exploring the various routes for recycling used textiles. It accordingly approached Legrand, a manufacturer of electrical products, who could recycle this "material" to produce new power connections.
The Régie therefore plans to expand its collection area and to develop sorting and upgrading tools at its disposal, in order to seize this opportunity and quickly generate two new integration jobs. Even better, it plans to create a regional textile sorting platform with the backing of the Local Plan Pour l'Emploi (PLIE), the authorities and the Community of Communes of the Vendôme country. This extension would ultimately (2011) mean another 15 jobs.
Through this project, it also aims for eco-tax eligibility: a subsidy granted by the authorities to eco-organizations, or used to finance recycling systems. This new aid will be paid to companies which recycle at least 70% of the materials collected and hire at least 15% of the employees under workforce integration contracts. The Veolia foundation, convinced of the importance of this project, has joined in by contributing to the purchase of the indispensable tools for this development : a conveyor belt, a goods lift, six new containers, ten forklifts, and ten sorting tables.