Utopias of sharing life, caring community in Paris

India has incorporated circular economy concepts in its policy, at long last but the real impact is yet to be seen. The potential is immense. I saw last week several examples in a commune, popularly known as Utopias in the eastern part of Paris (see the video or visit   https://www.facebook.com/anilgb.in/videos/10160236555920253/. It was a hospital building which was abandoned. Many social innovators have used this place and redesigned it as a laboratory for futuristic sustainable alternatives.

Thanks to Abhinav Agrawal, a young social entrepreneur himself, from Pondicherry and try to being Indian and French companies together, we met an extraordinary group of young social innovators. Let me begin with the story of La Boîte à Champignons, an enterprise co-founded by Arnaud Ulrich, Cédric Péchard, and Grégoire Bleu to collect filter coffee waste to grow oyster mushrooms. They collect about six tonnes coffee waste from nearby regions in Paris and grow about one tonne mushroom on that. It fetches around gross value of 30,000 euro and waste of mushroom as a farm manure fetches further two thousand euro. For collecting waste, they don’t have to pay anything because for the restaurants, disposal is a cost (See interview at https://www.facebook.com/anilgb.in/videos/10160236839790253/).  They have to pay for the transportation alone. France has total yield of 0.6 million tonnes of coffee waste, so much is untapped potential of high quality, very nice taste and highly nutritious mushrooms. As if this is not enough, the carbon di oxide from mushrooms is used for growing small sprouts as salad.

Another enterprise in the same campus collects food waste and converts into manure after mixing it with wood chips in about 15 days. But then there is also uneaten, unserved, leftover food which is thrown away. Upcycle programme of  Biocycle collect about 25 tonnes food and distributes among poor.  About 300 people in six months go out of the street and find jobs to feed themselves. The tricycle has a solar roof and also has special bags which keep pre-cooled food fresh for 4-5 hours, maximum time it takes to collect and distribute among poor.

Virtual assembly, a cooperative of open source ‘fanatics’ has developed semApps and  Advanced Cartography Web Component (ACWC)- open source tool for linking demand and supply of ideas, resources and functionalities and acwc is a cartographic tool. Guillaume Rouyer and his colleague explained many other services being offered at the Utopias which support many other social innovators. There was an educational NG which had a large network of volunteers which went to different schools for immigrants, poor and other marginal communities and taught science and math. They were keen to build links with open source community in India also.

Also met Zoe Bengherbi, who coordinates partnerships at  an open source residency for explorers, scientists and creators (http://openresidence.lapaillasse.org/en/index.html).  One can stay without paying anything at all, except spending five days a month on collaborative projects. One can pay for one’s brain and spirit and in return stay, eat and reflect on one’s own ideas. This Paris community lab is a working model based on open cooperation, trust and mutual respect and concern.

I will share more ideas next week. What is clear is that cooperative and shared spaces are here to stay. SRISTI’s natural product lab is one such place. It has Bionest incubator and also a social innovation fund (sif.sristi.org).  We  are willing to host young discovers who have open heart and mind and are willing to contribute by working to gain access to lab facilities to pursue their own ideas.

If Ahmedabad Municipal corporation PROVIDES spaces under the flyover and also some old closed down schools for similar social experiments, Indian bottom-up models will expand and fertilize social imagination. the Honey Bee Network takes roots in France. The Network is looking for volunteers in all fields of human endeavours. Are you willing to join this empowering sharing and caring community of social innovators?

The author is founder of Honey Bee Network & visiting faculty at IIM-A
anilgb@gmail.com