Sovasol: A recycling centre for sediment, soil and deconstruction materials

Project details

  • Main leader : SOLVALOR
  • Type of initiative : Individual initiative (company, etc.)
  • Périmètre : Sédiments : Bassin d’Arcachon et grands lacs des Landes Terres : Nouvelle-Aquitaine / Bretagne / Pays de la Loire
  • Localisation : Lieu-dit Graulin 33470 Le Teich
  • Date de début : juin 2016

Economy circular topics

  • Industrial and regional ecology
  • Recycling
  • Extending useful service life
  • Responsible consumption
  • Functional service economy
  • Eco-design
  • Sustainable procurement
Description

The Sovasol platform is a solution for the management and recovery of materials such as sediment, sludge, deconstruction materials and non-hazardous non-inert land. Its role is to take charge of materials, process them and transform them into materials that can be reused in local projects.

Originally, the Sovasol platform was created for sediment management, particularly in response to the tender from EPIC (an industrial and commercial public undertaking) at the Port of Arcachon for dredging and sediment management over a ten-year period. In 2016, the platform expanded its activities into managing non-hazardous non-inert land.

Reuse solutions offer an innovative approach for managers of ports, lakes, canals, ditches, ponds, and development or remediation projects in response to current issues related to the circular economy:

  • Recycling and recovery: a second life for waste,
  • Preserving natural resources.

The platform is used to turn materials into secondary raw materials with sufficient geotechnical properties to enable them to be recovered as eco-materials for road building, for example.

As it stands, the Sovasol site is currently made up of technical areas for drainage, stabilization, water treatment, storage and recovery, a logistics zone with living facilities and a weighing area, a laboratory and other facilities such as roads and embankments that are necessary for the installation as a whole to operate.

In summary, Sovasol is today structured around three activities:

  1. Managing sediment and sludge
  2. Recycling deconstruction materials and non-hazardous non-inert land
  3. Producing eco-materials: creating secondary raw materials

Qualitative benefits

The Sovasol platform is providing a new service for the Nouvelle Aquitaine region that did not exist before, with a very positive impact on the area.

Environment:

  • No storage of wastes in the environment, no polluting discharge.
  • An environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional waste disposal: waste materials that would have been sent to landfill
  • Production of reusable, formulated and calibrated eco-materials: creation of secondary raw materials, processing and recovery of materials
  • Proposing a range of recycled materials as alternatives to raw material extraction
  • Automatic incorporation of eco-materials created for improvement work to the platform

Economic:

  • Turning waste into a secondary raw material: no longer considered as waste.
  • Trading recycled materials on site.

Society:

  • Industrial ecology approach in synergy with local people.
  • Creating economic activity for local construction companies that work on the platform.
  • A cyclical activity that will quickly lead to the creation of jobs through the complementary nature of the different activities.

Stages of the initiative

2013: Sovasol becomes the holder of an 18-year lease with the municipality of Le Teich and the prefectural decree of December 20, 2013

2014: Construction, development and exploitation of the site for sediment

2014: BPI France excellence award from IDRA Environnement for its first Solvalor river-sea platform for processing and recycling earth and sediment.

2015: Sustainable development award to Solvalor technologies by the Normandy regional group for sustainable development in companies (Groupe Régional des Acteurs Normands pour le Développement Durable en Entreprise - GRANDDE).

2016: The Sovasol platform opens to receive waste earth. Sovasol will be using Solvalor technology to treat non-hazardous non-inert materials.

Scale-up

  • Support for the project from DREAL
  • The municipality of Le Teich is favourable to the development the platform (lease of land)
  • The Port of Arcachon tender
  • Grant from the Nouvelle-Aquitaine Regional Council

Obstacles

  • The emergence of projects is highly dependent on the willingness of those involved to engage sediment removal work. Work representing a substantial budget for local authorities.
  • Geographical limitation for collecting earth justified by economic efficiency. After a certain distance, the transportation cost becomes a deterrent. 

Areas of activity

  • Construction
  • Deconstruction
  • Recycling

Resources

  • Waste
  • Building materials
  • Excavated materials
Implementation

Technical resources

  • Platform for recycling and processing 80,000 m3 of non-hazardous non-inert materials over an 11 hectare area.
  • two 20,000m3 drainage lagoons for sediment
  • 4 Industrial platforms for processing and recycling earth (large slabs) - 40,000 m3 of earth
  • 1 screener/crusher
  • 1 mobile stabilization unit
  • 1 weighbridge
  • 1 Rotoluve (to clean the wheels of lorries)
  • Construction machinery leased from local public works companies

Human resources

3 employees.

SOLVASOL is a subsidiary of the Artesa Group (50 employees). The Sovasol platform works closely with LDRA Environnement, BET d’Ingénierie and Solvalor, the group’s first platform for managing and washing contaminated earth.

Financers

  • Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine

  • Port d'Arcachon

  • BPI France

Funding

Tender Self-financing Regional subsidy conditional on creating jobs in land development (€150,000 for the creation of 10 jobs)
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Benoit Anguenot

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