Temps de lecture : 5min
Dernière mis à jour : 19/02/2026
At the helm of (RE)SET, an environmental transition consulting firm, the former CEO of Citeo calls for giving a second wind to the circular economy, which is losing momentum.
The consulting firm (RE)SET, founded by Géraldine Poivert, supports companies in concrete trajectories of ecological and economic transformation.
"We have entered the era of resource wars." Géraldine Poivert no longer hesitates to hammer home this reality. This "daughter of the South" has been observing the issue for over two decades, after all. In 2020, as a France 2030 ambassador, she co-founded (RE)SET, the first consulting firm dedicated to economic and environmental transition. Born facing the Mediterranean, she maintains a visceral attachment to the sea, spins metaphors at lightning speed, and quotes Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, and Martin Luther King with equal ease.
It was in the early 2000s, after a postgraduate degree in political science, that she dove headfirst into the world of ecology. After a long-term thesis on the social construction of gender differences, she suddenly found herself thrust into the world of mass retail "at a time when it was much more powerful than it is today." In France, this was the dawn of environmental regulations. ADEME had just released its first carbon footprint assessment, and the Grenelle Environnement was getting underway.
For several years, Géraldine Poivert participated in the elimination of plastic carrier bags, the creation of the first sustainable agriculture label, and the first carbon footprint assessments for brands. "My commitment has always been pragmatic," she recounts, before insisting: "The environmental transition is economic. It must be planned, must go through factories, through new programs. Today, we run away from these debates."
THE ERA OF ECO-ORGANIZATIONS
In 2007, Géraldine Poivert founded Ecofolio, the paper eco-organization, which later merged with Eco-Emballages to become Citeo. "I fell in love with the eco-organization model," she explains, describing a sector in a maturity crisis. "Asking the actor responsible for designing the product to also design its end-of-life is a nice economic model."
Paper, for its part, is a naturally circular material. Géraldine Poivert recounts her adventurous years within paper mills, where she learned that the environmental transition is a true team sport. She also discovered there that the circular economy can address part of our competitiveness challenges. "In France, we have no oil, but we have ideas. Our handicap of having fewer resources than others is ultimately our El Dorado. We have this obligation of circularity."
ECODESIGN IN DECLINE
From the emergence of waste recycling under François Ist to the creation of the first eco-organizations in the 1990s, France was one of the first countries to embark on waste recycling. But the sector is now running out of steam. Thirty years after their creation, eco-organizations must now focus on material reincorporation and repair.
Géraldine Poivert points to a lack of investment in the sector and difficulties in opening factories. Generally speaking, circularity is no longer in vogue. In France, only 6 to 7% of spare parts for car repair come from the circular economy. "We no longer have enough car repairers. We lack craftsmanship. Yet, a reconditioned part is as good for the environment as it is for our economic competitiveness." (RE)SET is also working to put the citizen and the marketer back at the heart of the process. "Marketing, a true machine for creating desirability, must now make repair desirable. We haven't yet found the trigger that will make the action not forced, but a reflex we no longer think about."
Recently, (RE)SET has been supporting Circ, an American company planning to set up a textile recycling plant in Moselle. The commissioning is scheduled for 2028. "Textiles are a fascinating universe because they sit at the confluence of several issues. Clothing has been a social marker since the dawn of time. It prompts us to rethink marketing and to look closely at an industry we have lost. It perfectly summarizes the paradoxical injunctions of the environmental transition."
OPERATIONALIZING THE ENVIRONMENTAL TRANSITION
"Like Apollinaire, my job is to rekindle the stars," smiles Géraldine Poivert. When she created (RE)SET in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, she had one ambition: to support companies in moving to action. The firm offers a global diagnostic of activities to initiate real transformation trajectories. Six years later, the entrepreneur is pleased to have created pioneering consultants in the field but regrets that the economic model is a barrier to the development of the ecological transition.
While ecological backlash is on everyone's lips, Géraldine Poivert reminds us of the importance of corporate social and environmental responsibility (CSR). "They have the right to do business. Some of them allow us to clothe ourselves, transport ourselves, care for ourselves. But they must play their part." She regrets what appears to be a strategic error: "Our regulations have lacked planning and investment. Just as you don't land a plane without wheels, you cannot decree the development of renewable energies without an investment plan spanning from R&D to market launch."
Far from believing in Donald Trump's climate denialism, Géraldine Poivert is concerned about the American president's interest in Greenland: "The United States responds to the environmental problem with voracity. Faced with this resource grabbing, Europe has no other path than to enter its Green Deal decade." She proposes a solution in the form of a triptych: invest, operationalize, and protect markets. In her eyes, genuine water and land-use planning policies cannot emerge without the creation of public policies implemented by the private sector. She now calls for the courage of political decision-making. The environmental transition, she insists, deserves much more than an academic debate: it needs pragmatism.
