Art Paris in 2021, 16 tonnes of waste went to the dumpster. We dare not imagine the results of more important fairs. Faced with this observation, the organizers called on the agency Karbone Prod, founded by Fanny Legros, which is dedicated to eco-design and the analysis of the life cycles of materials. Herself a manager of a gallery for a time, this forty-year-old has noticed the lack of interest of the organizers of temporary exhibitions for their ecological impact and her vocation is to track down and resolve this kind of aberration. She also created Plinth, a company specializing in the reuse of scenographic materials in the cultural sector.
“Flow Diagram”
The first stage of his study consisted in identifying the most polluting materials. “It requires common sense and life cycle analysisshe explains. This table, for example: where does the wood come from, how was it treated, manufactured, transported and what will become of it after the fair? If we keep the table, so much the better, if it must become waste, how and where to recycle it. We asked ourselves these questions for the entire fair. »
A “flow diagram” made it possible to account for all the materials and energy required for the assembly and dismantling of Art Paris. Thus, the partitions of the stands represent 10 tons of wood. The brushed cotton that covers them, made fireproof by a chemical treatment, more than 3 tons, the carpet, 3.5 tons. The results were analyzed by a scientific firm, Solinnen.
“For the carpet, for example, we study its origin, its manufacture, its transformation and its routing, then a software calculates the list of its impacts. It will be reused after cleaning. The cotton will be processed by a factory that will re-fray it and transform it into insulating material for the construction industry. Waste is now subject to selective sorting. The partitions were designed to be reused around twenty times…” The simple replacement of halogen lights with LEDs has reduced consumption by 62%. The operation having received a grant from the Ecological Transition Agency (Ademe), its methods and results will be made public, hoping that others will be inspired by it.