Claire Poirier, the entrepreneur who wants to make zero waste accessible to everyone.
Hello Claire! Thank you for agreeing to answer my questions. Before we begin, could you introduce yourself for the people who are reading us?
Hello Clementine. Devourer of life, I am married and mother of three children. I studied biology of organisms and populations. Unfortunately, I never managed to find work in this field. So, I quickly retrained to become a nurse. It is a demanding and difficult job but I loved it. It is a job rich in human relations. But after 15 years of practice, I began to suffer from this profession. I was looking for a way to retrain.
For 3 or 4 years, I had dozens of ideas ! That's when the zero waste lifestyle came along. It resonated a lot with my early studies. And it was close to my values. In 2013, I discovered Béa Johnson and her book. With my family, we were already in the process of change. We bought our vegetables from AMAP and organic meat parcels. I used washable diapers for my youngest. In my town, the incentive fee also encouraged us to produce less waste. In February 2014, two months after reading Béa Johnson's book, I started a blog, Sakaïdé, to tell my experiences as a zero waste family.
The blog quickly found its readers. In June 2014, someone asked me where I found my bulk bags. At the time, it was impossible to find bulk bags on Google. I said to myself, you know how to sew, you make your own bags, so why not sell them? In October 2014, I started selling my bulk bags made in France on the Little Market platform. It was the beginning of the Sakaïdé adventure!
bulk-fruit-vegetable-bag
That’s great! Can you tell us how you became the entrepreneur you are today and how Sakaïdé has evolved since 2014?
I became an entrepreneur by chance. I know italy whatsapp number data this environment because my father, my brother and my husband were entrepreneurs. I know how difficult entrepreneurship is. But I realized that I had trouble working under someone else's direction. I wanted to be my own boss. After my experience as a nurse, I wanted to retrain. It seemed much easier to me to create my own business than to redo files to follow a new training. So I took the plunge!
When I launched Sakaïdé, I was still an employee and I was selling my bulk bags on the side.
After a burnout, I decided to stop being afraid, to seize this opportunity and to devote myself full time to Sakaïdé.
In 2015, I participated in Béa Johnson's conference when she came to Nantes. I also spoke at a round table organized by We Do Good and at a conference of the Nantes School of Architecture during the European Week for Waste Reduction.
In 2016, zero waste took a leap forward. I spoke at a conference of a community of communes in Maine et Loire to explain zero waste. At that time, I had an awakening. I wanted to develop workshops, in addition to the sale of bulk bags, to make zero waste accessible to everyone.
Today, I regularly organize workshops on making zero-waste cosmetics or household products, I take part in conferences, I offer zero-waste learning weekends and I still sell my bulk bags, but now on my website.
