Nantes, un ville "green"

Before arriving in Nantes, I heard from others- study-abroad students, SNSCA members, Nantes Young Ambassador Anais- that Nantes is a good match for Seattle in so much as that it's very green. They weren't kidding! As much as there is of cultural interest here- the Castle of the Dukes of Brittany, the Lieu Unique (former LU cookie factory transformed in cultural center), the Court of 50 Hostages- I've found myself consistently attracted to the city's many green spaces. My first day in Nantes, my host sister Florianne went with me for a bike ride on the Ehrdes. Ever since, I keep returning to the river banks (there are three rivers here, and canals), the parks, the lawn on the moat, and soak in the sun for a little while. Just today I discovered the Jardin des Plantes, originally planted during the reign of Louis XIV, located just outside downtown, across from the train station. While it's about the same size of the arboretum in Madison Valley, and has many of the same vegetation- rhododendrons, foxglove, evergreens, and even an Iris that came from the UW arboretum itself- it's very "French" in the sense that there isn't a leaf out of place. Each view from each pathway is well-placed, every nook and cranny is designed, and workers abound putting in new plants for the change of season. It's very quaint in how perfect it seems with doves and waterfalls abounding, but my previous experience in Paris parks tell me that it's not just for me, the tourist- the park is a part of the city's heritage and is appreciated regularly by its inhabitants.

Nantes is surprisingly "green" in the other sense too. While much of France is conscientious on some green topics, such as GMO's, water quality, etc., others, like air pollution, alternative fuel sources, recycling, are still developing on the social and political scene. Here in Nantes, however, sustainable development is very present in the media, in the city's fabric, and in the conversations I've had with the locals. This past Thursday I had the opportunity to visit Valorena, the local waste treatment facility, with other members of the Conseil Nantais de la Jeunesse (Nantes Youth Council). There, I learned more about the local "Tri-Sac" system (tri comes the word "trier," which means "to sort") that my host family had demonstrated to me at the house. The system is very simple: recycling goes in yellow bags, waste goes in blue bags. The bags are provided to residents free of charge, and unlike the system in Seattle (unless of course, it has changed, which it does often), all bags go into the same bin, and are collected by the same trucks, making it not only more efficient but less costly. The bags are sorted by a machine that isolates the yellow bags on the conveyor belt and sweeps them away into a truck that delivers the bags to a recycling center in eastern France. All the other bags pass on to a carefully developed incinerator and filtering system. The heat generated by the incinerator is diverted through a unique system to the surrounding neighborhoods, extending right into downtown Nantes. As for the fumes, they are filtered through such an efficient process that the (very little) fumes passing through the chimney have fewer dioxyines than that produced by all the domestic fires (barbeques, chimneys, etc) in Nantes. Indeed, it was difficult to tell if the chimney was even in operation as we approached the facility from the road.

Yes, there have been some difficulties in setting up this process- there's the need to educate the public on what is recyclable and what is not, the system in distributing cards to the residents for picking up their bags is a bit complex, and in the separate facility treating waste from the hospitals, they have had to educate the hospitals to send all body parts to the crematorium and not place them in the waste (yes, when this system was set up in 1997, a worker spotted an arm hanging out of one of the waste bins). But overall, the improvements are immense! For example, previous to Valorena, local hospitals simply incinerated everything at the hospital, with little to no treatment of the fumes. Many French cities do not have recycling sorting systems or the means to reuse the energy produced in their incinerator, or may not have an incinerator at all. While Germany is the leader in recycling in Europe, France is not too far behind.

And there are improvements yet to come- Valorena anticipates adding a green sack to its system for composting. While there are several personal composters in the outlying neighborhoods where there are community gardens, downtown residents don't necessarily have their own gardens to make use of compost. With a green sack, again collected with the other sacks in the same truck, all residents will be able to seperate compost, which will then be collected and composted together, and then, I imagine, redistributed. Valorena will also be constructing a second site for this new system in a "green" building that uses a minimal amount of energy, collects rainwater for use on site, has vegetation growing on the facade, and more.

Et pour mes collègues francophones !

Je trouve vos initiatives et vos projets « green » à Nantes très impressionants ! J’aimerais partager avec vous le système de recyclage de Seattle. À Seattle, le recyclage, c’est la loi ! Depuis 2004, c’est interdit de mettre des objets recyclable dans la poubelle désigné pour les déchets aux maisons et également dans les entreprises. Si on ne respecte pas cette loi, on n’est plus servi et les poubelles restent plein jusqu’à que le propriétaire ressorte ses déchets. Cet an, on a ajouté une service pour les déchets agricoles recyclables. On n’est pas forcé à utiliser cette service si on déjà fait le compostage chez soi, mais les autres sont exigés de l’utiliser.