A SOUTH-NORTH HISTORY
Since 2017, Waste&Hope has been based in Vendôme, in the Centre Val de Loire region of France. We make eco-designed furniture and objects from recycled plastic.
But the story begins 20 years earlier. In 1997, a dozen Senegalese women farmers decided to form a collective to get rid of the plastic waste that was preventing them from cultivating their fields on the outskirts of Thiès, Senegal’s second-largest city: the women’s promotion group “LAAK JOM” (meaning “courageous women” in the Serer language) was created under the impetus of Germaine Faye, with the support of the Italian NGO LVIA.
As plastic waste continues to increase, the associative project is transformed into a micro-industry dedicated to the collection and recovery of plastic materials. The NGO leaves it to the Franco-Senegalese firm ESPERE to professionalize and sustain the activity: the Senegalese company PROPLAST is created in 2010. Managing director Macoumba Diagne develops the collection and recycling business, in a circular economy approach.
In 2017, WASTE&HOPE was created in France by Jean-François Fillaut and François Raguenot, to support the development of PROPLAST activities from Europe. Its mission is to create value from unexploited or poorly exploited plastic waste, and to share this value to support the development of value chains, within a fair trade logic.
In addition to selling crushed recycled plastic to plastics manufacturers, the aim is to create eco-designed finished products that are 100% recycled and 100% recyclable. A prototyping workshop was set up in Vendôme (Loir-et-Cher, Centre Val de Loire region) to produce thermocompressed sheets and manufacture school benches. The trial was successful and transferred to Senegal: today, over 500 school benches have been manufactured and distributed throughout the country.
Since 2021, WASTE&HOPE has also been focusing on the recovery of untapped or poorly exploited plastic deposits in France, to create value and share it North and South. The plastic waste collected is shredded and then transformed into sheets using a thermocompression technique. The plates are cut on a CNC milling machine, assembled and finished in the Vendôme workshop by the WASTE&HOPE team.
