Logistics: Essential to Les Alchimistes

Founded in 2016, Les Alchimistes, a social enterprise (ESUS), specializes in collecting and recovering food waste. Its creation coincided with the enactment of an article in France’s Environmental Code requiring professionals producing more than 10 tonnes of biowaste per year to sort it at source. Since January 1, 2024, this requirement, introduced under the AGEC law (the Anti-Waste for a Circular Economy Act), has applied to everyone from the first kilogram of biowaste produced: individuals, companies and local authorities must now implement source separation along with an associated recovery solution. According to ADEME, 28.4 million tonnes of biowaste (green waste and food waste) are produced each year in France by professionals and households combined. But once separated from other waste, what happens to it? Two recovery channels currently exist: composting, to return it to the soil, and anaerobic digestion, for energy recovery.

Operating across around 20 regions in France, Les Alchimistes, which employs 300 people on work-integration programs, collects food waste from nearly 5,000 restaurants, supermarkets, nursing homes, cafeterias, grocery stores and more. The 25,000 tonnes collected each year are then transported to one of its 10 receiving facilities*. The bins collected by its fleet of around 50 vehicles, ranging from 3.5 to 19 tonnes, are weighed there and sorted by quality—that is, according to the quantity of non-food items found in each bin. “Once these items have been removed, the waste is consolidated, shredded and mixed with green waste,” explains Flore Desal, network director at Les Alchimistes. “We compost 700 tonnes of it at our facilities, the limit set by regulations. We store it for three months during the maturation process.” The remaining tonnes of waste that Les Alchimistes cannot handle are composted by partners, who return it once the process is complete. “We then sell this compost to farmers, market gardeners, winegrowers, landscapers and private individuals...” Only 10% of Les Alchimistes’ collections go to anaerobic digestion.

Managing food waste is complex because it deteriorates quickly. It therefore requires more frequent collection than other waste streams and a high degree of responsiveness. “Because ours is a volume-based business, to make vehicles and sites profitable, we optimize our routes using external tools such as PTV’s Optiflow and in-house tools for planning and truck geolocation, which we make available to all Les Alchimistes operations. This enables us to calculate the number of miles traveled and collections made, and to ensure that everything is running smoothly for each collection, even under unusual conditions.” As an ESUS, the company is required to help develop social ties and share value fairly by limiting pay gaps within the organization. Les Alchimistes therefore works with work-integration organizations, enabling people who are distant from the job market (former prisoners, people with disabilities, people from disadvantaged neighborhoods, etc.) to find a place in a collective “that provides meaning, under satisfactory and fulfilling conditions,” says Flore Deal, who also notes that “Les Alchimistes has been selected for Impact 40 and is therefore among the 40 French companies that best combine economic, social and environmental performance.” In certain regions, Les Alchimistes offers bicycle-based food-waste collection through “cycle collectors” and local cycle-logistics partners, for even more sustainable waste management.

Les Alchimistes also aims to increase the volume of food waste it collects and diversify into other types of biowaste, such as compostable diapers and used cooking oil. “Our goal for 2030 is also to create 1,000 additional jobs and raise awareness among nearly 7 million people, so that society moves toward a model in which sorting and recovering all food waste is the norm,” says Flore Desal. “We raise awareness among all types of audiences—citizens, professionals, local authorities, policymakers, the business community and children—through training and workshops; we invite everyone to visit our facilities, and more.”

* Paris, Toulon, Marseille, Lille, Toulouse, Montpellier, Angers, Saint-Denis (Réunion), Le Havre, Caen, Rouen, Puget-sur-Argens (Nice), two in Lyon, Nantes and Saint-Nazaire.