Jules Coignard

Hello everyone, I am Jules Coignard, co-founder of Circul'R whose mission is to accelerate the transition of companies and territories towards a circular economy.

Today, I dedicate a large part of my daily life to providing businesses, communities and public institutions with the means to effectively reduce their environmental impact by supporting them at all stages of their transition to a circular economy. Today, 91% of our economy follows a linear model of extracting raw materials and transforming them into products that are then thrown away. This model poses two major problems: on the one hand, we consume ever more natural resources, which is disrupting our ecosystems, while placing us at risk of shortages. On the other hand, the volume of waste is exploding, which contributes to global warming, while impacting biodiversity and our health. Because this linear system is running out of steam, our ambition at Circul'R is to enable economic and public actors to move towards a circular model where the ways of using resources, producing and consuming are guided by sobriety and respect for ecosystems.

I owe my eco-responsible commitment to a trigger, an awareness : having grown up in Anglet in the Basque Country, I have always had a strong attachment to nature, particularly to the ocean. Beyond this particular bond, I would say that the real trigger was my meeting with my partner Raphaël in 2013. At the time, we were both working at Airbus in Mexico. Passionate about surfing, we were struck by the volume of waste present in the ocean. It was our interest in these issues that initially brought us together. Moving up the chain, we understood that this marine waste was the result of the linear model which contributes to massive waste production on land. To preserve this nature that is dear to us, we told ourselves that we had to act to move towards a circular economy. A model that promotes intelligent use of resources and tends to eliminate the notion of waste.

In this sense, I devote most of my energy to transforming our economy towards a circular model. This was our ambition when launching Circul'R in 2015 with Raphaël and it still is. Today, the company has grown significantly and has around thirty employees committed to supporting the transformation of companies and territories through training, consulting missions and the creation of coalitions.

The way I perceive the world around me and the way I interact with others has been strongly influenced by the circular economy world tour that we carried out with Raphaël in 2015. The idea was to go and meet entrepreneurs, researchers and even farmers all over the world to prove that today we have all the solutions to develop sustainably. After a 17-month trip across 22 countries where we met more than 150 leaders of circular solutions, we returned to France, convinced that an alternative to our linear economy was possible. What particularly struck us during this trip was the enthusiasm of the people we met. I particularly remember a Cuban entrepreneur for whom the circular economy was nothing other than common sense when you are forced to live with little.

Since we are focusing on... Cuba, let me tell you an anecdote: in this country hit by successive embargoes, it was quite impressive to see the skills developed by the locals to compensate for the lack of resources. The people we met there impressed us with their ability to repair all kinds of objects or to divert the original use of an object to create new ones.

I like to think that the desire to support noble causes is contagious. So if I had to give advice to those who haven't yet taken the plunge: it would be to start by reducing your waste. It is within everyone's reach and several solutions exist to move in this direction, such as doing your shopping in bulk to eliminate packaging or even installing a compost at home to recycle your organic waste.

However, adopting a more ethical and responsible lifestyle is not a linear process; I myself still use the car too regularly for my travels. For long journeys I of course prefer the train but for my daily journeys, whether to go to the office or to take my children to school, I have not yet taken the step of the cargo bike...but that cannot be delay!

Venitz - le August 27, 2022