Circular Economy Mapping 2024♻️
Bpifrance Digital Venture is a responsible fund. Since its inception, it has supported projects that promote innovative technological solutions aiming at addressing the urgent social and environmental challenges of our time.
We are launching a series of deep dives into different key impact sectors, analyzing promising verticals where innovation is rapidly developing.
The subject of our first deep dive is the circular economy. The circular economy is an innovative and sustainable economic model based on reducing resource consumption and waste. It aims at transforming our society into one that values recycling and reuse over disposability. This system encourages sustainable production, preservation of natural capital, and economic development. With its principles of intelligent design and efficient material management, the circular economy represents a promising alternative to the traditional linear model, offering a path toward a more resilient future.
Numerous initiatives have emerged in France following the adoption of the AGEC law in 2020 (anti-waste and circular economy law), which outlines five major objectives: reducing disposable plastic usage and waste, educating consumers, promoting solidarity-based reuse, addressing planned obsolescence, and improving production practices.
Today, the circular economy takes various forms in both innovative and more conventional business models, some of which are more digitally oriented:
- Recycling: recovering waste and reintroducing it, after treatment, into the production cycle.
- Reuse: similar to the concept of recycling but applicable to products that are not considered as waste and are reused for the same purpose.
- Second-hand and Refurbishment: Refurbishing used products to give them a second life.
- Rental Services.
At Bpifrance Digital Venture, we are committed to encouraging these initiatives. For example, we invested in Recommerce in 2013, a pioneer of the refurbished smartphone, Faume in 2021, a platform that develops second-hand clothing resale solutions for retail brands.
The mapping below provides a non-exhaustive overview of circular economy startups in France. Feel free to help us complete it if you notice any companies missing from this scope!
