Ficha, a young start-up that reinvents waste sorting
Reading time : 4 min
Have you ever heard of the Bellepou story, the cocoon and its app?
Ficha is a young startup that was born in February 2020. It’s the first mobile app that rewards you for your waste sorting!
In short, it rewards the quality of your sorting with a system of points. Accumulated, they allow you to benefit from all kinds of advantages at partners promoting a more eco responsible consumption: Biocoop, Lamazuna, Phénix and many others.
Today we are more than happy to interview Vincent Hipault, President of Ficha, the first start up of our new section “Coup de cœur”. Let’s go and discover it.
We ad : Hello Vincent, we are delighted to talk with you about Ficha. Let me introduce you in a few lines 🙂
Vincent: Thank you for your interest in Ficha. I’m co-founder of Ficha and graduate of the master’s degree in entrepreneurship at Grenoble Ecole de Management. We founded Ficha with Hubert 3 years ago after we met at GEM and with the ambition to respond to one of the major challenges of the ecological transition: waste.
We ad : Tell us a little about FICHA’s vocation
Vincent: Ficha aims to engage residents of collective housing in waste sorting. Our solution makes the act of sorting waste attractive and fun in order to meet the expectations of users and to facilitate the management of waste disposal facilities for landlords and housing managers.
More generally, Ficha aims to help users reduce their waste in order to create the first zero waste collective housing.
We ad : What was your starting point for creating Ficha?
Vincent: The management of the garbage room represents a real waste of time and money for housing managers, namely social landlords and co-ownership syndicatesś. Indeed, the insalubrity caused by the non respect of the sorting instructions and the incivilities represent a very important cleaning overcost.
In addition, the management of conflicts between tenants with multiple complaints to manage makes the management of the garbage rooms more complex. The managers of collective housing try to find solutions, but this is not their core business. They are confronted with numerous problems creating a feeling of resignation.
In addition, the law on energy transition for green growth ratified in 2015 provides for the implementation of an incentive tax on household waste in France based on the polluter-pays principle. This incentive tax is calculated according to the quantity of household waste produced (grey garbage can). We know, after having carried out several waste audits in social housing and student residences, that there is still 70% in volume and 40% in weight of recyclable waste in the household waste garbage can.
We ad : In 3 words, how would you describe FICHA?
Vincent: Innovative – Optimistic – Ambitious