In the city of Bizerta there is a lack of contacts and knowledge between different actors that could work together to tackle pollution and waste. Proact Recycling, a recently-selected start-up in Tunisia, offers an easy linking between the textile industry and recycling farms. How is this innovative initiative achieving this link? It is possible thanks to a mobile application and a website that helps linking both actors to sort different kinds of industrial and domestic waste. Ibtissem Aoidhi, expert in Quality Health Safety Environment (QHSE), is the female entrepreneur behind this project.

She has more than 12 years of experience working with leather, footwear and textile companies. Holding a Master’s Degree in Quality and Productivity by the Tunis University – Superior National School of Tunisian Engineers (ENSIT Montfleury), Aoidhi is fully focused on decreasing the waste incineration of textile items and the complete legalization of the informal collector’s statues.

The web platform and mobile app are conceived as green services for professionals, collectors, recyclers and craftsmen in the textile sector. In a very competitive and variable global and national context, any company wishing to remain in the public scene and keep its market share must necessarily move forward and increase its turnover. Proact Recycling also provides customers with qualitative and quantitative monitoring of their production with analysis and improvement actions.

“We introduce ourselves as the first general moderator of recycling solutions for professionals and individuals in Tunisia”, they state in their website. The vision of this start-up is focused on the protection of the environment through the provision of their know-how, providing solutions to any ecological service requester. Through their free registration, customers can benefit from:

• Connecting with nearby household waste collectors.
• Accessing to their directory of establishments offering ecological products and selling in bulk.
• Tips for sorting, reusing and recycling internally.
• Their green newsletter with a calendar of events and associative projects in the region.
• Possibility of joining an environmental cause or creating one on their site as well as promoting it.

Currently they count with a total of 45.567 subscribers, 100% rate of completed projects and 267 professionals that joined. It’s one out of the six projects that are receiving incubation support by CITET – Centre International des Technologies de l’Environnement de Tunis, our partner in the country. They are benefiting from seven months of mentoring, business services and financial support to implement their green business model.  STAND Up! is an EU-funded project under the ENI CBC MED Programme, which is implemented in 5 Mediterranean countries: Spain, Italy, Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt.