SOS Recup, the answer to two problems : workforce development and waste treatment

« The human and social dimension of the SOS Recup project, combined with its environmental conservation function, is enabling the city of Mamers to benefit from a development tool that promotes the local economic dynamism and enhances the social fabric. I have to point out that Mamers is experiencing serious difficulty today after the closure of many small businesses in recent years.
The unemployment rate there is significantly higher than the national average. This project, even if the figures appear trivial, is certainly a powerful factor in reinforcing solidarity. »

Alain Wartel

Waste collection and sorting, recycling whenever possible, teaching schoolchildren, the general public and elected officials the importance of this activity : the nonprofit association SOS Recup, created at Mamers in 2008, grapples with these four activities. A member of the Union des ÉcoCycleries, in fact it has assumed three missions : environmental, socio‑economic and outreach.

SOS Récup collects and sorts the waste it recovers or which is dropped off in its 300 m² premises, and then deals with repairing whatever can be fixed and dismantling the rest. It then sells, quite cheaply, the items it has given a second life.

Five jobs already

In late September 2008, SOS Récup obtained official approval as a "back-to-work company". Thanks to this, it hired the first three persons under part-time fixed-term contracts, (equivalent to two full-time employees) staffed by a technical manager and a director for the organization. Yet the unit is bound to grow.
This is because the diagnostic work conducted by the association at the beginning of this creation - SOS Travail - helped not only to confirm the relevance of launching this new activity, but also the advantage of developing it on the neighboring communes.

SOS Recup will progressively propose new services to the population of Mamers and its environs : home collection, proximity sales, for example. It has accordingly applied to the Veolia Foundation. Thanks to the grant obtained, it can buy additional equipment, as well as a collection truck that will enable it to perform these new services.