[News] José Manuel Moller, the Chilean who received the UN Champion award: “More than recycling, it is much more radical to question consumption”

[FNX Magokiler]

José Manuel Moller (35 years old, Santiago de Chile) did not want to wash dishes. That's why, at the age of 22, when he decided to leave his parents' house and go with a group of friends to live together in the po[CENSORED]r commune of La Granja, in Santiago, he offered to cook and do the shopping. . As Business Engineering students at the Catholic University in Chile, Moller and his friends came from families of high socioeconomic status, but they wanted to know independence away from the comforts of their homes of origin.

The budget they had to live on was not very large and, as a purchasing manager, one of the things that first caught José Manuel's attention was to see that, when purchasing products in small quantities, the price was up to 40% higher than those that were sold in large volumes. It was a kind of “poverty tax,” which the recent graduate set out to correct. This is how Algramo was born 13 years ago, a venture focused on neighborhood stores that started selling products in bulk through dispensing machines and that today works with returnable containers. They already operate with 5,000 warehouses spread throughout Santiago and in the coming months they will expand to the regions of Valparaíso and O'Higgins.

Algramo was a pioneer in Latin America and Chile in starting a business with a sustainability purpose behind its business model: it was proposed from the beginning as a company that sought to reduce plastic waste by reusing packaging. The company began to gain fame and recognition worldwide, at the pace of its international expansion, while its founder positioned himself as a key player in the circular economy.

 

 

A career that he crowned this week after receiving the Champion of the Earth award from the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). He is the first Chilean to receive this award, which in previous years has gone to figures such as the Swedish activist Greta Thunberg; the British naturalist Sir David Attenborough; former Vice President of the United States, Al Gore; or the current president of France, Emmanuel Macron.

Moller was surprised by the news. It is a recognition for which he is not applying and that found the Chilean entrepreneur in the middle of an important turning point in his life, he tells EL PAÍS connected by video call from a hotel room in Istanbul, Turkey, the city in which he participated in the first face-to-face meeting with the new United Nations Zero Waste advisory council, of which this year he was named vice president. In three more weeks he will be a father for the first time of a girl who will be baptized Ana, and his business is preparing to scale in 16 supermarkets in England, where he has operated since last year in three locations of the Lidl retail chain.

For three and a half years, José Manuel and his wife have lived in the lively neighborhood of Hackney, in the northeast of the English capital. The Chilean chose England to expand his business, because one of his first allies, the detergent brand Unilever, is based in that city. And also because he sees that in Europe the regulations are more demanding in environmental matters.

 

https://elpais.com/chile/2023-11-02/jose-manuel-moller-el-chileno-que-recibio-el-premio-campeon-de-la-onu-mas-que-el-reciclaje-es-mucho-mas-radical-cuestionar-el-consumo.html