Every year, rolling stock—Intercités, Transilien, TER and TGV passenger trains, and diesel and electric freight locomotives—are taken out of service for disassembly and reclamation. Qualified subcontractors dismantle and decontaminate the units, and parts in good condition are reused in the active fleet, reducing maintenance costs.

Several disassembly plants do the work.

Maintaining and upgrading our rail lines, requires us to remove large quantities of material. By reusing and recycling it, we advance the circular economy—conserving mineral and plant resources, shrink our environmental footprint, and preserving increasingly scarce metals.

Screws and other small parts go to a special recycling facility in Beaune, in eastern France. By 2025, SNCF Réseau plans to collect and reclaim 100% of the components from its infrastructure project sites for reclamation.

In November 2019 we launched La Grande Collecte, a nationwide campaign to collect old PCs, smartphones and tablets and give them a new life. This effort has funnelled nearly 40,000 PCs (over 60,000 units when smartphones and tablets are included) into the circular economy. Olinn, our partner company, audits and reconditions the devices and resells them on the market at very affordable prices. Nearly €90,000 in proceeds has been invested in non-profit projects.

To encourage responsible use of digital technology, SNCF Group and Olinn founded Pour un numérique engagé, a nationwide Internet-based platform. The aim is to encourage other companies to join us in promoting the circular and solidarity economy, using the channel we’ve created to reuse IT equipment. ICF Habitat, IT Novem, TGV Lyria and others have already accepted our invitation.

At SNCF, an employee’s workwear is a sign of their job title. For safety and security reasons, it can’t be dropped in public collection bins for mainstream textile recycling. In 2014, we joined with the non-profit OREE to create FRIVEP, a dedicated channel for collecting and processing workwear. FRIVEP is backed by 6 partner businesses, along with industrial companies, institutional partners, and Ademe, France's Agency for Ecological Transition.

Unneeded protective gear. Excess station and office furniture. Surplus supplies and small appliances. Instead of throwing away these unused items, SNCF employees can list them on Boutique Éco, an in-house swap-and-share website. It’s a practical, personal way for all of us to help reduce waste.