New business opportunities for French cleaning companies

11th of November 2015
New business opportunities for French cleaning companies

ECJ’s French reporter Christian Bouzols on a new service for members of the federation of cleaning companies in the area of waste handling.

The federation of cleaning companies (FEP) in France will soon be providing its members with tools and materials to help them prepare tenders for the supply of services for the reduction, the separation and the pre-collection on non-paper waste. This support will be made available from early 2016.

Cleaning companies are involved daily in helping their customers from every sector of the economy in maintaining healthy conditions at work and in improving the inside environment of their buildings. This type of work puts them in a prime position to respond to the issues of sustainable development. Through their daily involvement with their customers, cleaning companies are a driving force in promoting and achieving improvements in the management of office and other waste.

Well aware of the issues at stake and of its duty to support sustainable development, the FEP has signed, three years ago already, a voluntary agreement with the Ministry of the Environment, Sustainable Development and Energy and other key players engaged in the collection and recycling of waste paper.

Under this agreement, the parties committed to collecting 200,000 additional tonnes of office paper by 2015, contributing thereby to the development of a French industry for the recycling and utilisation of paper waste.

But beyond paper waste, the agreement also highlighted the role of cleaning companies in the separation and pre-collection of the non-paper waste generated by their corporate clients, examples of which are toner cartridges, cardboard boxes, bulbs, batteries, waste electrical and electronics equipment (WEEE), cans and plastic cups.

For cleaning companies the management of non-paper waste offers opportunities for further growth with the setting-up of new associated services.

This was the background to the FEP engaging in the development of training tools and materials in this area. These will be made available to cleaning companies as from the beginning of 2016 to enable them to prepare tenders for the management of non-paper waste as a complementary activity to cleaning services. The aim is to involve 500 cleaning companies by the end of 2016, and 3,000 by 2020.

All the stakeholders, and in particular corporate customers for cleaning services, will be made aware of the role of cleaning companies in terms of reducing, separating and pre-collecting business waste.

 

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