[We Commit] OVHcloud partners with the Social and Solidarity Economy world to recycle its packaging foams

Our industrial model, based on the assembly in our server in our factories, involves a significant production of packaging waste, linked to all the products we buy to assemble the servers.
This packaging waste consists of cartons, plastic straps and protective foams.
In an effort to manage our resources sustainably, we have launched a project to reduce waste in the first place and then make the most of it.

For over a year, we have been working hand in hand with our suppliers for a more sustainable packaging, less producer of single-use waste: the idea is to reduce waste at the source.
For example, with our partner Innodesign, we have developed a packaging in the form of a reusable container. Together with other partners, we are working to minimise the use of plastic foams and other materials.
For our internal FRET, we opted for a cardboard formwork for the transport of our racks to ban plastic films from our organisation.
 

The foam is still present in our production plants: it is still a very effective solution for protecting components during transport. After thinking about reducing it to its source, we tried to find alternatives to give it a second life.

We then got closer to the Zero Waste initiative of the City of Roubaix and the European Upcycle Your Waste Project, which put us in contact with the start-up Umains, which offers a turnkey solution for the recycling of our foams using the Social and Solidarity Economy.
Thus, once a week, boxes full of foam are collected, sorted and stored by the D.Multiple workcamp in Tourcoing, a few steps from our manufacturing plant in Croix.
Once the foams have been identified, they are referenced on the Umains platform: the foams are then either reused or recycled by local actors.
This represents more than 1 ton saved from landfill since the beginning of the partnership in July 2021.
30 hours of work experience have been created in the Lille metropolitan area.

This project is part of our environmental approach and is in line with our industry's goal of Zero Landfill by 2025.

To learn more about our environmental approach