A stable economic model
A site that closes after two years does more harm than one that never opened. Financial stability is not a secondary goal: it is the condition for everything else.
Why aim for stability from the design stage
Keep the jobs
Sorting, repairing and running a workshop are skills learnt over years. Precarious contracts make people leave just when they become useful.
Weather the cycles
A system that depends on a single grant stops with it. Diverse resources protect against budgetary and political swings.
Pay back the investment
Fittings and machines are amortised over several years: only regular operation makes them deliver everything they can.
Reassure partners
An elected official supports a known, monitored net cost more readily; craftspeople, schools and companies commit if the place will still be there next year.
Three revenue pillars
Pillar 1 — Activity revenue
A reuse shop, sales of materials, workshops, fablab memberships, supervised machine use, training, and services for companies and public bodies: small production runs, furniture, spare parts, repairs.
Pillar 2 — A service contract
Every tonne diverted from disposal is a tonne the local authority no longer pays to transport and treat. A multi-year objectives agreement, backed by indicators, pays for this service and replaces an uncertain annual grant.
Pillar 3 — Project funding
National environment agencies, regions, reuse and repair funds created under extended producer responsibility schemes, calls for projects, sponsorship — to start and to invest, not to operate.
A non-monetary foundation
On top of the three pillars: volunteering, donations of materials and tools, premises or machines made available. They reduce fixed costs and can be valued in the accounts.
Six levers of stability
- Diversify — aim, over time, for no single source to exceed half of the budget (an indicative threshold).
- Count avoided costs — transport, treatment, and landfill or incineration taxes. In France, the general tax on polluting activities (TGAP) applied to landfill and incineration has risen sharply since 2021.
- Pool resources — premises, machines and skills shared with existing actors: reuse centres, fablabs, vocational schools.
- Grow on evidence — each investment step is triggered by indicators actually reached.
- Build a reserve — a few months of running costs, to absorb a late payment without laying anyone off.
- Publish the accounts — what is measured gets funded more easily.
A three-stage trajectory
| Stage | When | What it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Start | Year 1 | Start-up funding dominates; first revenue; service agreement signed. |
| Consolidate | Years 2–3 | Own revenue rises; agreement indexed on results; reserve built up. |
| Stabilise | Afterwards | Balance between the three pillars; investments partly self-financed. |
A target trajectory, not a forecast. Funding schemes evolve: conditions and amounts must be checked when a project is put together.
A social and solidarity economy approach
Reuse was not born yesterday: reuse centres, charity shops, work-integration workshops and networks such as Emmaüs or Envie in France have practised it for decades. TRIFAB builds on that know-how and adopts its principles:
- A social purpose — an aim other than the mere sharing of profits, democratic governance, profits mostly reinvested in the activity (in France, the conditions set by the law of 31 July 2014 on the social and solidarity economy).
- Employment and integration — dismantling, sorting, cleaning, repairing and selling are accessible, formative jobs that cannot be offshored.
- Access for all — solidarity prices, reduced rates for associations, schools and low-income households.
- Shared governance — a cooperative of collective interest (the French SCIC) can bring together the local authority, employees, users, associations and businesses; an association is a simple way to start.
The set-up to study first
The local authority keeps control of the public waste service and of the recycling centre. A social economy structure — preferably an existing one — runs the reuse centre and the fablab. A multi-year objectives agreement links the two, on results that are measured and published.
A social-purpose project is not a project without an economic model. It is a project whose economic model serves its social purpose.
Bring TRIFAB to your territory
The first step costs nothing: ask your local authority to study, within twelve months, the feasibility of one pilot site — then decide on measured results.