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Using intrapreneurship to recover worksite and industrial waste

#construction
#circulareconomy
#materials

Waste Marketplace was born out of a grassroots approach to waste management, and it has become a benchmark application in the French market for managing waste from worksites and industrial sites. It is the brainchild of a VINCI Construction employee: Jérôme de Tomasi. Convinced that he could rationalise, simplify and improve waste management, the intrapreneur took the plunge, supported by VINCI Group's Leonard, the platform for forecasting and accelerating innovative projects. Here's how it works.

Waste management: a major challenge for construction and industry

Construction worksites generate 224 million tonnes of waste a year, almost three quarters of the waste produced in France each year. Waste from economic activities, i.e. hazardous or non-hazardous waste from the production sectors (agriculture/fisheries, construction, tertiary sector, industry) accounts for 66.1 million tonnes.

Recycling waste from construction and industry is at the heart of the circular economy. Recycling waste not only helps to limit pollution (soil, water, air and visual pollution from illegal dumping), but also saves the planet's exhaustible resources, because waste that is sorted, treated and recycled is a potential source of raw materials for industry.

Facilitate the management of worksite and industrial waste

Portrait de Jérôme de Tomasi

Jérôme de Tomasi was still working for VINCI Construction when he came up with the idea of simplifying and rationalising the management and recovery of waste from worksites and industrial sites. His observation is simple: Waste management is complicated, costly and less than transparent for those in charge of it. The idea is ambitious: To digitise the process, centralise offers from specialist service providers by type of waste, reduce costs, and provide customers with accurate reports on the waste they recover and measure their environmental action.

Development: Leonard, support in developing your concept

A great idea is good, but even better are the means and advice to succeed and move in the right direction. It's at Leonard, VINCI Group’s platform for forecasting and accelerating innovative projects, that Jérôme de Tomasi found the support he needed to turn his idea into reality. In 2017, he joined Leonard's intrapreneurship programme. He took part in two acceleration phases, formalised a Proof of Concept (PoC), noted the appetite for such a solution and refined its model by selecting specialists in each waste sector throughout France.

The adventure is as gripping and stimulating as it is unsettling, in a good way! Entrepreneurship gives me an adrenalin rush that I couldn't get anywhere else!

Portrait de Jérôme de Tomasi

Jérôme de Tomasi, Chairman of Waste Marketplace.

Waste Marketplace: the worksite and industrial waste management application

Whereas waste management is often synonymous with legal, economic, organisational and even administrative complexity, Waste Marketplace simplifies the process - which the application covers from start to finish - thanks to an algorithm that searches for the best local service provider in terms of price and recovery rate for each type of waste. With just a few clicks, customers can request a quote online, launch an operation in less than 48 hours and track the management of their waste using recovery dashboards.

For Waste Marketplace, growth and prospects are excellent. The start-up is now selling user licences for its SaaS application to businesses, and is developing a strong consultancy business thanks to the in-depth knowledge of the sector it has developed.

 

Key figures:

700 specialist waste service providers throughout France.

An average recovery rate of over 85%.

Over 150,000 tonnes of waste already managed.

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