giving a second life to old schoolbags, an ecological and charitable operation

Back to school often means new schoolbags. But rather than throwing your old one in the trash, a start-up is offering to recycle it. The aim: to limit textile waste, which is particularly polluting.

Paw Patrol, Disney princesses, Spiderman, Harry Potter… In the playground, since the start of the school year, there has been a parade of new school bags. Children and teenagers rarely keep them for several years in a row, so to prevent them from ending up in the trash, Plaxtil, a start-up specializing in the regeneration and recovery of waste, offers to recycle them. The material is reused, transformed, the bag becomes a brand new school supply.

First step, drop off your old schoolbag at a Cultura store. It will then be sent to the start-up’s factory in Châtellerault (Vienne). “If the schoolbag is reusable, we will put it aside to give it to charitable associations who will then give it to families in need”explain Olivier Civil, co-founder of Plaxtil, which works with the Salvation Army, Catholic Relief Services and the In-Kind Donation Agency.

In case the bag is worn to the bone, “We will start by dismantling it, separating the different parts, then we will regenerate the materials to make a hybrid, recyclable material. These materials will be sent to manufacturers to make new products such as double decimeters, protractors, set squares, binders, etc.”explains the head of the start-up. These objects are put back on sale on the shelves of Culture.

With this process, “we are 1,000 times less polluting”assures Olivier Civil, who regrets that non-recycled school bags end up incinerated or buried, contributing to the immense pollution generated by the textile industry. Between 200 and 500 million tons of textile waste are not recycled in the world, according to the company.

In 2023, 25,000 school bags were recycled. For this second year, the start-up hopes to do better. By mid-August, Plaxtil had already received 23,000.The operation ended on September 15.