© Plastic Odyssey

19 tons of plastic enter the ocean every minute. Yet this waste can be an invaluable resource! Making recycling this waste a profitable and job-generating activity: that's the challenge facing the Plastic Odyssey team. Merchant Navy officers, a sales manager, and an engineer, these young entrepreneurs decided to build an ambitious project to raise awareness about plastic waste recycling and share expertise with emerging countries.

An expedition to share low-tech and open-source plastic recycling technologies

For three years, the Plastic Odyssey team will sail the world's seas on a ship to fight plastic pollution. The expedition will stop in emerging countries to encourage local waste reduction initiatives and the creation of small recycling plants. At each stop, Plastic Odyssey will share low-tech and open-source recycling technologies to foster the development of micro-entrepreneurship and the circular economy. Training in plastic sorting and recycling will also be offered.

This project does not aim to collect plastic present in the oceans but to act upstream, by working with local populations on depollution solutions, so that land-based waste does not end up in the oceans.

The first ship to move forward thanks to recycled plastic

The ship will be ready to sail in the second half of 2020. Measuring 40 meters in length, it will run on fuel made from plastic waste using a pyrolysis plant installed at the rear of the boat: a first in the field of navigation.

For 3 years, he will successively travel the coasts of Africa, Latin America, and Asia to raise awareness of plastic pollution in the oceans, encourage the reduction of plastic and its recycling, and transform plastic waste into resources.

The fight against plastic pollution: a major societal issue

The fight against plastic pollution is a concern that Crédit Agricole shares with Plastic Odyssey. The Group was already a partner of Plastic Odyssey in 2018, during the prototyping phase of the project. Crédit Agricole, through 16 entities(1), is continuing this commitment by supporting Plastic Odyssey's initiative with €1.2 million over 5 years. The support provided for this expedition is in line with the Crédit Agricole Group's Social Project.

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(1) 7 Regional Banks (Alpes Provence, Aquitaine, Atlantic Vendée, Charente-Maritime Deux-Sèvres, Finistère, Normandy Seine, Provence Côte d'Azur) as well as BforBank, CAMCA Mutuelle, Crédit Agricole Assurances, CACEIS, Crédit Agricole CIB, Crédit Agricole Immobilier, Crédit Agricole SA, Crédit Agricole Poland and Crédit Agricole Italy.

To strengthen its efforts and commitments to the energy transition, Crédit Agricole has adopted a Group climate strategy, aligned with the Paris Agreement, which will be implemented across all its entities. Through this strategy, the Group aims to make green finance one of its growth drivers.

To strengthen its efforts and commitments to the energy transition, Crédit Agricole has adopted a Group climate strategy, aligned with the Paris Agreement, which will be implemented across all its entities. Through this strategy, the Group aims to make green finance one of its growth drivers. In this context, Crédit Agricole is the first major bank to make phasing out coal a climate imperative.

There are several components to this commitment:

• Gradual reduction of portfolio exposure to coal in a scenario of a total exit by: 2030 for OECD countries / 2040 for China / 2050 for the rest of the world.
• Communication of the coal exposure of portfolios annually from the end of 2019.
  Request for companies to communicate a plan for the withdrawal of their coal assets (according to the 2030/2040/2050 schedule depending on the location of their assets).
• Termination of relations with developers of new thermal coal capacities from 2019.
• No development of relationships with companies whose coal activity exceeds 25% of turnover. For companies beyond this level and with a degraded transition rating, only financing for renewable energy projects will be possible.
• Placement of companies outside the process in a “under transition vigilance” portfolio leading to a reduction or even a freeze of our financial support.

A picture update with Eric Campos, Director of CSR at Crédit Agricole SA and General Delegate of the Grameen Crédit Agricole SA Foundation.

From October 20 to 25, the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation brought together in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso) 22 African microfinance institutions (MFIs), partners supported within the framework of the African Facility, a mechanism set up in 2013 by the Grameen Crédit Agricole Foundation and the AFD to support a greater number of rural MFIs in sub-Saharan Africa.

On October 20, the 42 representatives of the partner institutions met with the Foundation's teams to take stock of the African Facility over the past year, welcome the new beneficiaries of the program and share best practices from the various institutions present, before meeting with the representatives of AFD and Proparco present in Ouagadougou.

Participation in the African Microfinance Week

The African Facility's partners also had the opportunity to participate in the African Microfinance Week (AMW 2019), organized by ADA from October 21 to 25. Open to all microfinance practitioners, the AMW is a shared African platform for reflection and exchange among all stakeholders in the sector to sustainably accelerate both financial inclusion and economic growth on the continent.

The aim of this event is to facilitate exchanges between microfinance professionals and foster synergies at the regional and international levels. With this in mind, the Foundation organized a training session on Adapting MFIs to Climate Change, which brought together more than fifty professionals, mainly from Africa, concerned by the fact that climate variations and the difficulty of predicting the climate are jeopardizing the livelihoods of microfinance borrowers, and thus threatening the future ability of MFIs to operate in rural areas.

Represented by Philippe Guichandut, Director of Inclusive Finance Development, the Foundation also spoke at a roundtable discussion on the current state of the inclusive finance sector and its contributions to the SDGs in Africa. He highlighted, among other things, the challenges related to the financial inclusion of refugees, the challenges of digital finance, and the importance of financing small farms, which remain at the heart of the Foundation's concerns.

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