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The Green Brigade keeping a close watch
There are around twenty members of this Green Brigade taking it in turns each day in the Village. Among them Romane and Carla. Nothing gets by them. Not a single paper or cigarette butt. Their role is to make the Village as clean and ecologically managed as possible, by ensuring that waste sorting is done correctly in the bins. They check that visitors are doing the right thing and offer assistance to the exhibitors.
The bad news is that each day they are still picking up hundreds of cigarette butts, but the good news is that they do not go unnoticed. "The fluorescent jackets really stand out,” commented Clara. “It is especially parents with their children or elderly people that tend to come and ask us questions or congratulate us."
Jean’s round
Then, there are the measures that are not as visible. Each morning before the village opens, Jean from the Toutenvélo company goes around the docks. "We spot everything; organic waste, coffee grounds and dirty cups are handed over to the ‘Consigne Havraise’ recycling plant." Washed and cleaned, they are then brought back by Jean the next day in exchange for the cups used the previous day. Each day around 10,000 cups are reused in this way. Then, there are the people who keep them as souvenirs, which is a saving of 80,000 reusable ‘Ecocups’ during the period the Village is in place. The icing on the cake is that these pretty cups have no shelf life and can be used again in two years from now for the 2025 race.
Nothing is wasted and everything is reused
These are simple measures to adopt, but are essential, as each bit of waste will have a new life. The coffee grounds will be reused as fertiliser by the City of Le Havre in the Hanging Gardens, while organic waste will be used to produce methane thanks to a local farmer, and cigarette butts are recycled to be used as insulating material. When the Village is taken down, the material from the stands that is not going to be reused will be recovered by local charities, who will ensure that the furniture and accessories are recycled.
We should remind you that the aim of the Transat Jacques Vabre association is to achieve zero waste that is not recycled in 2025. "With each edition of the race, we are making improvements,” explained Gildas Gautier. “Even if the event is getting bigger and bigger, thanks to the work done by all the teams, we continually manage to cut our carbon footprint still further, as that is a fundamental aspect for us."
