"At Sauvage, we are not limited to one idea. We can also innovate. We try, we experiment. It's an everlasting quest to improve the quality of what we do."
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00:00 I went on a trip.
00:02 I decided to leave Marseille to go to Toulon, to Calamash.
00:10 It was 120km that I did in two weeks.
00:12 I was rather euphoric at the beginning, tired in the middle,
00:18 very depressed the tenth day, because that day we had too many waste.
00:24 I was collecting all the waste that I could find either floating or immersed.
00:27 And then finally happy, the trip was worth it,
00:30 to have recovered 100kg of waste.
00:33 And then we asked ourselves what we were going to do with this waste.
00:37 My name is Manu Lorrain, I am the founder of the association Sauvage Méditerranée.
00:54 Sauvage Méditerranée is an association that revalues the waste collected on the beaches of the Mediterranean.
01:02 We are going to transform this material to make creations.
01:06 The first product we released was actually bracelets.
01:09 We thought, well, why not develop a jewelry range.
01:14 So then we made earrings in recycled plastic,
01:17 necklaces too, with for example, poly green.
01:20 We wanted to offer something pretty, but with a certain value.
01:24 Two years ago, I think, an organizer in Marseille saw our plates
01:32 and asked if there was a way to make trophies with them.
01:35 And in fact, we said, well, we'll try.
01:38 And it finally became a product that worked really well,
01:42 because they take them back every year.
01:46 At the beginning, it was more of frustration.
01:49 I didn't know how to show this problem that I was seeing.
01:54 I prepared myself, it was a real challenge.
01:56 I attended conferences, I trained.
01:58 And then, in fact, it was at that moment that I also started to look at myself,
02:01 to go see other associations.
02:03 The frustration was a real challenge.
02:07 I was a little bit afraid of the fact that I was going to be a part of this.
02:11 So, I went to associations.
02:15 From frustration, we went into action.
02:18 The wild workshop here is a small workshop that we recovered in 2019,
02:25 which was empty and we completely built it from scratch,
02:29 using materials, in particular, recovered either from neighbors before they threw them away.
02:34 We did everything, mostly with recovery objects.
02:39 We tried to find systems to filter and recover water.
02:42 We also chose to make a bike cleaner because it was more ecological
02:45 and more energy-efficient.
02:47 For the thermal compression, it's just a pizza oven that we recovered.
02:53 And the molds are just steel plates.
03:04 I did studies related to plastic processing processes.
03:09 In class, we learned all about the processes of large industries,
03:14 with very industrial machines.
03:16 And it's true that working in an association is not at all the same scale.
03:20 These plugs are washed in the washing machine, in the pedal.
03:28 Then we put them to dry outside.
03:30 Then we sort them, by material and also by color.
03:35 It's perhaps the most tedious of all the steps on recycling,
03:45 sorting the waste.
03:46 It's full of little waste that are sometimes not easy to identify.
03:50 We know that there are some plastics that are more easily revaluable than others.
03:55 For example, they have to heat up to temperatures that are acceptable for us in an oven.
04:00 And there are others that will have to heat up much more.
04:03 Once it's sorted, we grind them into small pieces,
04:08 because it's in this way that it's easier to transform.
04:11 There are two ways to transform them.
04:15 Either in thermal compression,
04:17 where we put the pieces in a mold.
04:21 We put the mold in an oven to melt the pieces.
04:24 Then we press them to make a plate.
04:26 And then we can cut out the shapes in this plate.
04:29 And there is also the injection.
04:33 We put the pieces directly in a preheated space.
04:40 And then we inject them in a mold to have more 3D shapes.
04:45 We have about thirty associations.
04:48 And these associations will give us a part of what they collect.
04:52 Plastic, plastic, polystyrene, boat sails.
04:55 It's really about working locally.
05:01 From the beginning, we have associated ourselves with Sauvage NĂ©y PĂ©ranay.
05:04 They have been collecting our corks for six or seven years.
05:06 I love their brand, I'm a big fan.
05:08 And they have also implemented the wild currency.
05:14 How to reward people who come to our pick-ups.
05:17 And every time people come to our pick-ups,
05:19 we give them a wild currency that gives them a discount to one of our partners.
05:23 For this, we had to create a network of partners who accept this currency.
05:30 We would like to have a much larger workshop.
05:33 Even a rather futuristic workshop.
05:36 It could be eco-designed from marine waste.
05:39 We, with Sauvage, do not limit ourselves to an idea.
05:43 We try, we experiment.
05:45 And always in search of improvement in the quality of what we do.
05:49 [Music]