Sassenage – France

Soda blasting furniture

Key areas

Region/country

THE CONTEXT OF YOUR INITIATIVE

Fashion moves on and sometimes in our communities we find beautifully crafted furniture from the Henri II period that our clients have neglected.

At the same time there is a strong trend of customising furniture in our society.
Bearing this in mind we considered different opportunities for how to customise these pieces in an environmentally-friendly way.

Painting directly onto varnished furniture requires chemical paint and due to our environmental concerns we thought it important to use a biological paint which doesn’t give off any harmful chemical particles (for the majority of apartments and houses the warm air inside is more polluted than the air outside due to the use of paint, glue, paint remover, etc.).

With this initiative we also wanted to train the companions in new trades.

THE ACTIVITIES CARRIED OUT AS PART OF YOUR INITIATIVE

We thus decided to strip the furniture with soda blasting, a quick and precise way of working that doesn’t damage the surface.

Either the companion working on the soda blasting chooses pieces of furniture from our sales areas for stripping or we do so following a request from one of our clients.

We also offer a one-week training course on the use of biological, environmentally-friendly paint (to be used on toys and furniture).

Our stripped/customised toys and furniture are marked with our brand, ‘CAC 38’ (creation by the companions workshop 38).

This project helps to show a new side of our communities and or companions who, thanks to their talent and experience discovered during the training programmes, have been able to further develop their skills.

WHO IS INVOLVED FROM OUR GROUP?

This soda blasting work is done by two companions in Versoud.

Both the companions and the community leaders demonstrate this work regularly in order to raise awareness amongst people who don’t come to our sales.

WHICH PARTNERS ARE YOU WORKING WITH ON THIS INITIATIVE?

FUTURE PROSPECTS

Organising sales.
People we meet at presentation days are very surprised to see that Emmaus is innovating and adding value to the products we sell.
Changing the image people have of the companions.
There are talents within Emmaus.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD ANY INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR INITIATIVE?

WHAT ARE YOUR PROSPECTS?

To finish the project for our soda blasting area.