Conserving natural resources
Conserving raw materials
Graphics: 1, 2 & 3
Veolia Environmental Services facilitates the development of material, agricultural and energy recovery, respecting the hierarchy of treatment methods.
Selective collection and sorting of waste (wood, paper, cardboard, glass, metals and plastics) produced by industrial companies and households, recover materials by recycling waste to transform it into reusable materials.
Waste that cannot be integrated into material recovery systems will
be recovered for energy, thanks to the capture of heat produced by incinerators equipped with recovery systems and the capture of landfill gas derived from decomposition of landfill waste.
Finally, the organic fraction of industrial or municipal waste flows may also be recovered for agricultural use, so as to restore the content of organic material in soils and to limit the need for added enrichment derived from fossil fertilizers (nitrogen, phosphorus, potash).
Veolia Environmental Services has made a commitment to reduce the percentage of waste treated (landfill or incineration) without recovery.
This strategy is boosted by changes to treatment systems between 2006 and 2007. The percentage of material recovery systems (particularly due to the integration of the new Sulo subsidiary) and energy recovery systems will increase.
The percentage of unrecovered landfill or incinerated waste is +5% less than itwas in 2006.
Saving water resources
The efficiency ratio of Veolia Water's drinking water networks in the European Union remains greater than 80%, in line with the commitment made in 2002 and carried forward until 2011.
This illustrates the high performance level in mature markets.
Development in countries in which water services require major upgrades over several years is incompatible with commitments taken on a global scale. Thus in 2007, the addition of a new contract for a city of 1.5 million residents with an efficiency ratio of 15.4% has reduced our worldwide efficiency by 2% that would have been equal to 78.5% and therefore higher than 2006, if this contract had not been included.
Preserving energy resources
Graphics: 1, 2 & 3
Veolia Energy - Dalkia's consumption of renewable and alternative energy has increased by two thirds in two years,and by 54% since 2006,due to three factors :
- an acquisition and development policy giving preference to operations making significant use of biomass, particularly in Hungary and Germany;
- continuation of a policy to substitute biomass for fossil fuels in our operations, either through the development of biomass boilers or by including a certain percentage of biomass into burned coal;
- development of heat recovery in municipal waste incineration plants (MWIP)
Note : Heat recovered in MWIPs is now taken into account by assigning 50% into the renewable energy category, instead of assigning 100% into the alternative energy category previously.
This breakdown complies with international recommendations, and this is why we have updated the 2006 figures.
Production of renewable and alternative energy by the Group is almost 29% higher and has reached 15,377 thousand MWh (thermal and electrical). Energy recovery of incinerated and landfill waste is 16% higher than itwas in 2006 and still forms the main source of the Group's production (57.5% of the total). However,its part in the total production of renewable and alternative energy is 5% lower due to the strong increase in energy produced by Veolia Energy derived from biomass (+50%). Within a restricted volume, Veolia Water's policy to produce renewable energy (energy recovery from biogas and microturbines) has increased production by more than 53%.