According to the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME), perishable waste represents a third of residual household waste in France. A Toulouse start-up named Hector le collector had the good idea of collecting unused urban food waste at offices and restaurants in order to transform it into bio-energy.
“When I lived in the country, I used to sort my organic waste and make compost in the bottom of my garden. When I moved to Toulouse (also named the ‘pink city’), I found it very difficult to carry on this habit. It is precisely at that moment, in June 2020, that the idea of creating Hector le Collector sprang to my mind,” recalls Quentin Saieb, founder of the green start-up.
Once to six times a week, Hector collects bio-waste at companies and restaurants, which signed a deal with him. Overall, more than 600 employees benefit today from his service and each employee can receive an individual kit to collect waste at home and deposit it in their office in a wooden bin provided by the start-up.
“The price of the service is fixed according to the number of collections and not on the volume collected”, indicates the young entrepreneur while he adds: “Our philosophy is to propose our customers a motivating price in order to encourage all employees to fill in our bins. We do not want to penalise them with a price based on a collected volume”.
Quentin Saieb, CEO of the Toulouse based start-up
Those food waste streams are then sent to a bio gas plant located 40 km from the “pink city” where it is transformed into green gas. While Mr. Saieb first created his company with his own funds, he was also very happy to count on the support of local initiatives such as Initiative Haute-Garonne or Créalia, supported by the FOSTER TPE PME funds of funds in Occitanie.
Thanks to the FOSTER TPE-PME support, CREALIA helps entrepreneurs launch innovative businesses with a high local impact in the whole Occitanie region, through personal loans that go up to EUR 100 000 per project.
“Our mentor introduced us to Créalia so as to finalise the first-round financing. In Toulouse, it is very important to benefit from their support; for a start-up, it is a guarantee of quality and seriousness. Créalia marketed our services to their network of partners, opening up new business opportunities for us. The EUR 22 000 loan from Créalia enabled us to buy equipment in order to collect waste: an electric car, wooden bins, recycled plastic bins and small bamboo bins for users”.
Quentin Saieb, CEO of the Toulouse based start-up
Looking ahead
Despite activity being slowed down by the pandemic, the startup collected 45 tons of bio-waste in 2021, equivalent to 31 500 kWh of energy produced. The company, which initially wants to expand its presence in Toulouse, is also working on the development of public collection points.
These points could be located in bulk grocery stores where customers could maximise their ecological commitment by depositing their bio-waste when shopping. In 2022, the start-up also plans to extend the service to the 20 largest cities in France. A new regulation coming into force as of 2025 will make bio-waste sorting as compulsory and should therefore further increase the popularity of the company.
FOSTER, a breath of fresh air for Very Small Enterprises and Small and Medium Enterprises (VSEs and SMEs) in Occitanie
In order to fill financing gaps and boost business competitiveness, the Occitanie Region has developed, with the support of Europe, financial instruments providing financial solutions at very favorable terms for regional VSEs and SMEs, under the name ‘FOSTER TPE-PME’. Three products are made available to them: a bank loan guarantee, a zero-rate innovation loan and equity participation in the capital of companies, via financial operators or intermediaries (banks, business loan associations, investment companies), such as Créalia, selected following a call for applications.
This initiative is co-financed by two European Structural and Investment Funds, the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), with a contribution from the European Investment Fund (EIF).
To date, EUR 181 million have been mobilised to boost the entrepreneurial fabric in Occitanie, generating EUR 1.2 billion in private financing for the benefit of 7 000 VSEs-SMEs.
