On July 22, 2025, Laurent Mogno, President of ECT, explains ECT’s strategy for the management and recovery of excavated soil from construction sites. In the program Objectif Croissance on BFM Business, hosted by Vincent Touraine.
What does ECT do ?
ECT is currently the leader in France in the recovery of excavated soil from construction and public works sites. This involves reusing the soil to carry out green projects that benefit areas used for agriculture, forestry, or recreation.
In concrete terms, we identify a vacant lot, abandoned or damaged land and transform it into a park or orchard.
How ?
– In close consultation with local stakeholders,
– Under strict environmental and urban planning regulations
– Without mobilizing public funds.
What happens to the excavated soil you recover, how do you reuse it ?
In France, every year, more than 100 million tons of soil are excavated during construction work, mainly for new collective housing. Note that this does not include rubble or other demolition waste, but rather soil used for foundations and parking lots, for example. In addition, more than 90% of this soil is unpolluted, inert, and poses no danger to the environment or health. ECT reuses and recycles 12 million tons of this soil every year in its projects ! These include urban and landscaped parks, agricultural areas, mountain bike trails, urban forests, and areas dedicated to biodiversity—in short, the natural areas of tomorrow!
If your fittings are free, how do you earn a living ?
Due to the density and necessary densification of cities, a large proportion of excavated soil is not reused at the excavation site, is therefore surplus to requirements, and must be removed.
Excavators pay ECT to manage and receive this soil. ECT thus has the materials and financing to design and carry out all its projects. That’s why it’s free! It’s a perfect example of a circular economy business model that reuses materials as resources.
To what extent are you responding to current environmental challenges ?
If I have presented our model correctly, you will have seen that we are essentially a player in the environmental transition !
Firstly, through the very nature of the unbuilt and green projects we carry out and their ecological virtues :
- They sequester CO2 (over 40,000 trees planted per year, for example)
- They are oases of coolness in suburban areas
- They infiltrate the water to benefit groundwater and plants while combating flooding
- They are fertile and increase the amount of woodland, grassland, and cultivated land
- They are conducive to the preservation and development of biodiversity and are sometimes even exclusively dedicated to this purpose
- They help combat the spread of invasive species
Then by the way we carry out our projects :
- We ensure complete traceability of the soil, from the excavation site to the ECT project,
- Our projects are located less than 25 km from the excavation sites, reducing CO2 emissions associated with transporting soil by half.
Are there any obstacles to the development of your business ?
Today, regulations are ill-suited to land management and limit the amount of land that can be reused in certain projects.
In particular, they do not take into account the local and ecological nature of reuse or the preservation of public resources.
Let’s take an example: you are an elected official and want to build a park in your municipality. What could be more natural than using land from nearby housing developments to finance and build the park? Of course, it will be hilly, rather attractive in fact, and you will like it; but you will have to justify using this land when it would have been possible to build a flat park without importing soil.
We would like to see regulations that reflect this simple common sense approach, which has many benefits.
