The third edition of the Awards welcomes the home design and DIY magazine Marie-Claire as a new partner. Alongside the eco-organisations Eco-mobilier and Eco TLC, the association FSC France, the consultants EVEA, the participation of ADEME and the Fondation pour la Nature et l’Homme, Maisons du Monde aims to promote young talent of the future through sustainable creation. The brand wants to initiate a change in behaviour by raising awareness about eco-design (training of buyers), taking into account of the sustainable management of wood at the heart of the product offering and the identification of sustainable products with a view to selling them.

With the Awards, students or young graduates from French design and fashion schools are invited to study the eco-design of furniture and decorative products (all materials, including textiles) by integrating the steps in the product’s life cycle (choice of material, transport, end-of-life) and innovating in order to reduce the impact on the environment without reneging on style.

For this new edition, Maisons du Monde wants students to follow two “trends”: Hygge or Workshop. Since 2016, 29 schools and more than 100 students have already taken part in the Awards and some of the prize-winners have seen their project marketed by the brand.

• .Two main prizes: one for the “Furniture” category and one for the “Decoration and household linen” category: a cheque for €2,500€, the chance of a work placement with the Maisons du Monde Designer teams and the creation of the prototype.
• A FSC® France special prize: Maisons du Monde FSC® certified furniture worth €600.
• The “Like it” public prize: all of the pre-selected projects will be presented on the Maisons du Monde Facebook page: the project that receives the most “likes” wins €500 in Maisons du Monde gift vouchers.

The winning items could be commercialised by Maisons du Monde, within the framework of partnerships to be set up between Maisons du Monde and the winner(s).

Each year, the Maisons du Monde Foundation is supporting projects based on three major themes: preserving forests, recycling wood and acting for the environment. After its annual selection committee in March, the Maisons du Monde staff members were asked to choose their four “Favourite” projects. These projects will be financed by the Foundation and also supported by the ARRONDI operation at checkouts. Among them, AICO La Manufacture will benefit from donations from Maisons du Monde customers!

The brand offers its customers the chance to round up their purchases in order to support an environmental cause: forestry preservation in southern countries or association working to recycle wood. Rounding up has become a permanent feature in French stores since 2017: this generosity-based mechanism is supported by customers who round up their purchases more than one time out of every two!

At the end of October, customers in stores will discover the AICO La Manufacture association, based in Prades, Pyrénées Orientales France, and its wood recycling project. Its goal: helping unemployed women to get back to employment and acquire new competencies: craftsmanship with wood.

With this project, AICO La Manufacture hopes to offer these long-term unemployed women a place in society by restoring their confidence (skills, creativity) and presenting the products created to the general public.

The Maisons du Monde Foundation has decided to support this project for three years with a joint environmental and social vocation.

The funds collected at checkouts with Arrondi will help to:

• Increase the reuse of furniture recovered from bulky waste (via the customisation and reconstruction of this furniture)
• Acquire a workshop and a storage room for this activity
• Train the association’s employees and hire a technical assistant
• Raise awareness among the general public with activities and courses on wood recycling

The Maisons du Monde Foundation's mission is to support associations that contribute to the safeguarding of forests and biodiversity, for and through local populations.

Each year, following the Foundation's selection committee, the company's staff choose their "favourite" projects, which will be financed by the Foundation and supported by customers through the "ARRONDI en caisse" scheme.

Every time customers go through the check-out, the store teams suggest rounding up the amount of their purchase to support an environmental cause: the preservation of forests in southern countries, or the recycling of wood-based products.

Since December, Tchendukua is the association benefiting from micro-donations made by Maisons du Monde customers (Tchendukua means "where thought converges"). This association works in Colombia in Sierra Nevada, a region with rich biodiversity but where only 17% of the original forests are still intact. This region is inhabited by four peoples, including the Kogis and the Wiwas, who have lost a large part of their territories.

The association's plan is to help the Indians legally recover their ancestral lands, and thus safeguard their cultures and special relationship with their environment.  

In partnership with Marie-Claire Idées, the eco-organisations Eco-mobilier and Eco-TLC, the association FSC France, the life cycle analysis consultants EVEA, and with the participation of the ADEME and the Nicolas Hulot Foundation, these Awards aim to promote you talent of the future, commit to changing behaviour by raising awareness of eco-design, include the sustainable management of wood at the heart of the product offering and identify sustainable products with a view to selling them.

47 students took part in the third edition of the Awards, representing 13 design, fashion, and art schools from all over France. They presented eco-design furniture or decorative accessory projects. The students show great creativity to reduce impacts on the environment, without overlooking style!

The jury selected 10 projects in the “furniture” category and the “decoration” category/ At each step in the product’s life cycle, the students showed great ingenuity by proposing innovative uses (double functionality, lifespan, etc.), sustainable sources (FSC® certified wood, recycled materials, etc.) or simple assembly methods for users.

From 1 to 30 April 2019, the 10 pre-selected projects will be presented on Facebook in the frame of the “Like it” public award. Web users are asked to vote for their favourite project by liking the student’s photo. The winner will receive a €500 gift voucher for FSC® certified Maisons du Monde furniture.

All the winners will be revealed next October in Paris at the official award ceremony attended by the project’s partners and design experts. Prototypes of the “furniture” and “decoration” projects will be presented to the participants.

Vote for your favourite project here!

In 2016, API’UP was among the very first associations supported by the first selection committee of the Maisons du Monde Foundation. In 2019, the Foundation renewed this partnership for an additional 3 years! Following the “staff favourites” vote, the API’UP project was chosen to be presented to customers at French stores via the Arrondi Round up operation. Thus, API’UP benefits from the visibility brought by the ARRONDI operation and customer generosity: about one customer out of every two participates in the solidarity Arrondi Round up operation at Maisons du Monde.

API’UP is an association that works to support people in great professional and social difficulty towards employment (long-term unemployment, isolation, etc.). For this, the association has formed an integration work project, the aim of which is to help people in need going back to work by training them in the recycling of waste, including wood.

In 2016, the Foundation financed the purchase of equipment for the “From Waste to Design” workshop. The star product produced at this workshop is the “LEXI” unit, made entirely from solid wood waste.

In 2019, the Maisons du Monde Foundation has renewed its partnership with API’UP to allow them to:

• Extend the materials used to leather and textile
• Conduct research work in order to create new materials from recycled materials!

Thanks to the generosity of customers, the sums collected with the Arrondi Round up operation will finance:

• The team in charge of the design and research and development of new products.
• The purchase of equipment to launch the MATERIA 4.0 programme: the aim is to process even more waste such as leather, fabric, and chipboard furniture in order to make new objects.

In its first CSR plan, Maisons du Monde committed to a programme to lower its “direct” carbon footprint (Scope 1 & 2) in order to reduce greenhouse gases based on the following objectives:

• 25% reduction in the energy intensity of stores and warehouses (kWh/m²)
• 40% reduction in the carbon intensity of direct activities (kgCO2eq/m²)

Since 2016, the reduction of energy consumption at stores and warehouses, the purchase of renewable energy, and the optimisation of the transport of goods have contributed to achieving these goals.

• All the new stores opened have undergone renovation or maintenance and are now equipped with LED lighting, namely 103 stores equipped in the existing pool (as at 31 December 2018).
• 89% of stores are powered by energy from renewable sources, thanks to the signature of new electricity supply contracts for the brand’s French, Italian, and Spanish stores.
• Finally, each year, 12,000 tons of goods are transported by train between the warehouses and logistics centres in the Paris region.

Thanks to these actions, energy consumption was reduced by 17% in intensity between 2016 and 2018. “Direct” greenhouse gas emissions have been reduced by 50% in total value thanks to the subscription of renewable energy supply contracts.

To support the coordination of the climate strategy, in 2017, the Group took part in  the testing of the ACT (Assessing Low Carbon Transition) evaluation method by ADEME (French Environment and Energy Management Agency) and the CDP, designed to evaluate the strategy of companies in light of scientific data and the efforts to be implemented in order to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement. Maisons du Monde’s commitment to the Group’s fight against climate change contributed to obtaining an A- rating in the CDP’s questionnaire. 

The actions designed to control in-store energy consumption are accompanied by improved coordination at the actual stores. At each retail outlet, a CSR reference person is in charge of disseminating good practices for managing energy consumption among teams and setting up actions to reduce the store’s everyday carbon footprint.

• 60% of our wood furniture offering meets a sustainability criterion (certified, traced, recycled wood or eco-design product).

• Maisons du Monde is a partner of 11 associations that work to give downgraded products a new lease of life.

• 89% of stores are powered by renewable energy.

• Since 2016, we have reduced the greenhouse gas emissions of our stores and warehouses by 50%.

• 58% of store managers or logistics managers come from internal promotion.

Reducing our carbon footprint, transforming our products by adapting our collections to favour an increasingly responsible offer, accompanying our staff to help them grow, and mobilising citizens on the subject of environmental preservation.

This is our vision of a responsible and civic brand that works hand-in-hand with its staff, its customers, and also its suppliers in order to help them progress.

On 11 July, the total of the donations collected via the ARRONDI Round up operation exceeded the one million euros threshold. Indeed, since the launch of the ARRONDI Round up operation in all our Maisons du Monde stores in France, customers have made more than 8 million micro-donations to support the forest preservation and wood recycling projects selected by the Maisons du Monde Foundation.

For the occasion, the brand wants to thank its customers for their generosity, but also the staff, in particular the checkout teams, which work daily to promote the associative projects that benefit from the ARRONDI Round up operation. Thus, at Maisons du Monde, about one customer out of every two on average makes a contribution to arrondi at the checkout.

Since 2016, 10 associations have seen their projects financed: Envol Vert, Tchendukua, Le FOYER Notre-Dame-des-Sans-Abris, Ishpingo, GERES, API’UP, AICO La Manufacture, Forestever, Cœur de Forêt and Awely.

Every year, it is these projects that welcome a team of randomly selected Maisons du Monde staff members who are offered the chance to discover the impacts of the donations collected, in the field. For them, the idea is to spend a few days participating in the life of the association which supports the local communities in preserving their environment.

Starting on Monday 19 August, all micro-donations made via "ARRONDI en caisse" (price round-up system at the till) will go to the Brainforest association, in collaboration with "Man & Nature de Noé", to support the project "Combating deforestation in the Gabon through cacao".

Selected in the 2019 Maisons du Monde Foundation's Call for Projects for three years of support, this project is being coordinated by the Brainforest association in partnership with the "Man & Nature de Noé" programme. On 1 January 2019, the merger of two associations, Man & Nature and Noé, gave rise to the "Man & Nature de Noé" programme. This is designed to help local populations manage their natural resources sustainably by teaching them sustainable farming practices through cacao growing. 

The Brainforest association's project is taking place in Minvoul, in north Gabon, not far from the Minkebe national park, which contains part of the Congo basin. Brainforest wants to assist women in harvesting produce that grows on trees, such as fruits, and to relaunch cacao growing in Minvoul.

The overall long-term objective here is to combat the deforestation now seriously affecting the Congo basin, the third largest tropical basin in the world.  

Through this project, communities and especially women can earn a stable income for their families while protecting the forest's natural resources.

Funding from the Maisons du Monde Foundation will make it possible to:

• Introduce agroforestry plantations in the shade, including cacao trees
• Boost 25 producers' capacities in terms of good farming practices and commercial management to increase their autonomy
• Diversify marketing with forestry produce, so that communities are not solely dependent on cacao harvests

For more information, see the association's website: http://www.brainforest-gabon.org/

7 new projects were chosen by the Foundation’s Selection Committee, namely 23 projects supported by the Foundation in a total of 11 countries over the year.

A budget of €953,539 was allocated to the Maisons du Monde Foundation in 2018, €413,877.66 of which was collected via the ARRONDI en caisse operation.

€3,271,277 of donations were made by our customers thanks to the ARRONDI en caisse operation for the benefit of 4 associations supported by the Foundation and chosen by you, the staff, during the 2018 Favourite vote: Forestever, Envol Vert, Ishpingo and finally AICO.

1 highlight:  The first edition of the “Aux Arbres !“ event was held on 8 and 9 June 2018 in Nantes, gathering together 5,000 visitors to share in the challenges of preserving forests and biodiversity.

We invite you to take part in the second edition of the event on 20, 21 and 22 June 2020 in Nantes!

For more information about our actions in 2018, take a look at the 2018 annual report here (in French only).