Good practice:

ENFIN! RÉEMPLOI - Avoiding waste by extending the life of construction materials

The building and public works sector is a major consumer of resources and energy. It is also a generator of very large quantities of waste, which has a high potential for recovery, which has yet to be developed.
Faced with these facts, the ENFIN! RÉEMPLOI collective (FINALLY! REUSE), supported by 5 associations, companies and public institutions, aims to structure a professional sector around the reuse of construction materials in the region of Savoie around the city of Chambéry, in order to help reduce the amount of waste and consumption generated by the construction sector.
Around the environmental impacts it has, the ENFIN! RÉEMPLOI is fully in line with the principles of the circular economy. It is also anchored in the social and solidarity economy since it is a generator of jobs (in particular in the field of integration) and a driving force of the local economy.
The activities developed are the following:
- Extraction and collection of material at the end of its first life in the context of demolition sites, scrap, unsold goods, construction site surplus or production offcuts, etc.
- Storage / repackaging / distribution of materials on a physical platform
- Resource diagnostics, project management, design studies to help professionals in their reuse process and accompany the material towards its second life
- The creation of a centre for the transformation and standardisation of reused wood products for professionals is also underway.

The cost of the initiative is 280,000€, financed by the partner local authorities, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Region, the departmental integration fund, private foundations and by private contributions from the supporting structures. 2 jobs have been created to ensure the development of this activity.

The approach is still recent but already has very positive results:
- Involvement of companies and public authorities in the process
- 25 tonnes of reused materials entered into storage (in 3 months of collection), diverted from the waste stream for a gross value of about 20,000€
- Promising contacts with major construction groups
- 20 visits to the platform for the sale of reused materials to various audiences (specifiers, private contractors, local authorities, reuse project leaders, etc.)

ENFIN! RÉEMPLOI is an innovative territorial project that combines the private sector and public institutions to achieve resource saving objectives.
There are many requests from structures (private and public) wishing to discover and be inspired by the model, whose potential impacts are multiple:
- Educational: conveying a message and awareness towards a new way of consuming the material
- Environmental: reducing the proportion of materials destined for the waste sector, which is an extremely heavy burden for the community,
- Economic: to create a new professional sector, new skills and local jobs in the region of Savoie.
Companies are often held back by the lack of identifiable and available reused materials. The creation of such an approach on a local scale has a real interest in facilitating access to reused materials. This approach can be reproduced in all regions wishing to encourage the reuse of materials by proposing concrete solutions to the stakeholders of a territory.