Each year, a staggering 1.5 tons of red synthetic carpet is used and replaced daily during the Cannes Film Festival. But instead of heading straight to a landfill, this iconic material is now being offered a “second life.”

The Cannes Film Festival red carpet is being repurposed in Marseille by stylists, theater groups, and for fashion shows. Jeanne Ré, coordinator of the Arts Reserve, describes the initiative: “We sell it like a ‘simple red, fine red carpet’, not as ‘the cane carpet.'” The Arts Reserve, an association that acts as a “Waste management operator of the creative world,” is paid by the festival to “Revalorize” its carpets.

Ré explains, “We do not sell this fabric by playing on the marketing side, sence whatever it is, it will be sold at the same price.The objective is that it is accessible to as many members as possible. These are elements that were not intended to be reused. By reconditioning them, we participate in lowering the environmental impact of the event, the festival of which is well aware.” The Cannes red carpet is sold for one euro per kilogram, or “Or 33 cents per square meter, it’s unbeatable!”

We make classic handbags but also bags for wine bottles, bobs, glasses cases, fairly unique pieces

In a 300 square meter warehouse in marseille’s working-class neighborhoods, the association reclaims various materials from theaters, production agencies, and fashion show sets, reselling them at prices “At prices three times lower than those on the market,” according to Bonnie GUESS, the sales manager. Elsa Ramouni-Yordikian, client of the Arts Reserve and secretary of the association Les Nippones, which has been using the carpet for over four years, adds, “With this Cannes carpet, we make classic handbags but also bags for wine bottles, bobs, glasses cases, fairly unique pieces.”

Ramouni-Yordikian recently showcased creations made from the 2024 carpet in Marseille in an exhibition entitled dress like a movie star.“The fact that it comes from a famous festival and that it is indeed recycled in the region, for us, it makes sense,” she says. “It is not necessarily an amazing quality this carpet, but that is precisely why we use it.” She believes that the production of “These kinds of synthetic materials” “will never stop, there will always be, as much as festivals, salons, so you have to find ways to revalue them.”

Cannes recovered 1.5 tonnes of carpets, wooden skids, posters, and plastic tarpaulins from the festival which ran from May 13 to 24.

“Give a second life”

Pallets of the red carpet, wrapped in black garbage bags, await conversion in a corner of the deposit. Despite being holed, marked, stapled, taped, and sometimes smelling of humidity, the Marseille branch of the Arts Reserve, with its five employees, is dedicated to “Give a second life” to the materials, according to the coordinator, who begins by cleaning it.

The coordinator of the Arts Reserve explains, “By working with us, Cannes accepts that its budget is a little bit revised upwards, because we, our action and our know-how is more expensive than recycling machines. If we weren’t there,they would have just broken down and shredded the carpet to redo plastics behind it.”