Veolia Environmental Services
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Veolia Environmental Services (in French Veolia Propreté), formerly Onyx Environnement, is a division of
Veolia Environnement Veolia Environnement S.A., branded as Veolia, is a French Multinational corporation, transnational company with activities in three main service and utility areas traditionally managed by public authorities – water resource management, water m ...
. It employs nearly 78,000 staff, has operations in 35 countries around the world, and generated revenues of nearly €9.02 billion in 2009. It specialises in the management, treatment and disposal of waste, as well as the recycling, reclamation and re-use of waste products. Veolia Environmental Services manage solid and liquid waste, as well as hazardous and non-hazardous waste materials. In 2009, the company collected 42.7 million tonnes of waste, treated 62.5 million tonnes, and recycled 12.7 million tonnes. In 2015, Veolia North America was paid $40,000 to produce a report on
Flint, Michigan Flint is the largest city and seat of Genesee County, Michigan, United States. Located along the Flint River, northwest of Detroit, it is a principal city within the region known as Mid Michigan. At the 2020 census, Flint had a population of 8 ...
's water supply. Veolia Vice President Rob Nicholas asserted that the water was safe to drink and met state and federal standards. The report received additional scrutiny in 2016 after a state of emergency was declared over toxic levels of chemicals detected in Flint's water supply. A Veolia spokesperson asserted that testing for lead and copper levels was beyond the scope of their work.


History

1853: The French Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE) began as a
water industry The water industry provides drinking water and wastewater services (including sewage treatment) to residential, commercial, and industrial sectors of the economy. Typically public utilities operate water supply networks. The water industry doe ...
company. 1953: CGE begins to collect household waste. 1975: The firm SARP Industry is founded to treat hazardous waste. 1980: CGE takes full control of the Compagnie Générale de Chauffe (CGC), a company with which it has already operated incineration plants since 1967. CGE also assumes control of the Compagnie Générale d'Entreprises Automobiles (CGEA), a business with significant presence in household waste management and in urban transportation. 1986: CGE opens its first waste drop-off centres. 1989: Creation of the Onyx Environnement brand, which unifies all of CGEA's waste management activities. 1998: Parent company CGE was renamed
Vivendi Vivendi SE is a French mass media holding company headquartered in Paris. Widely known as the owner of Gameloft, Groupe Canal+, Havas, Editis, Prisma Media, Vivendi Village and Dailymotion, the company has activities in television, film, video ...
. 1999: Creation of Vivendi Environnement to consolidate environmental activities of Vivendi. Vivendi Environnement divested by Vivendi between 2000 and 2002. 2003: Vivendi Environnement becomes
Veolia Environnement Veolia Environnement S.A., branded as Veolia, is a French Multinational corporation, transnational company with activities in three main service and utility areas traditionally managed by public authorities – water resource management, water m ...
. 2005: Onyx becomes Veolia Environmental Services.


Boycotts

Veolia has been the target of
boycotts A boycott is an act of nonviolent, voluntary abstention from a product, person, organization, or country as an expression of protest. It is usually for moral, social, political, or environmental reasons. The purpose of a boycott is to inflict som ...
and
divestment campaign Disinvestment refers to the use of a concerted economic boycott to pressure a government, industry, or company towards a change in policy, or in the case of governments, even regime change. The term was first used in the 1980s, most commonly in ...
s, primarily by pro-Palestinian groups. In 2013, a "Dump Veolia" campaign organized by the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee succeeded in halting approval of a multi-million dollar contract with Veolia. The pro-Palestinian group opposed contracting with Veolia on three primary
human rights Human rights are Morality, moral principles or Social norm, normsJames Nickel, with assistance from Thomas Pogge, M.B.E. Smith, and Leif Wenar, 13 December 2013, Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyHuman Rights Retrieved 14 August 2014 for ce ...
grounds. They allege that: *Veolia Environmental Services-Israel, a subsidiary, manages the Tovla landfill in the Jordan Valley. *The subsidiary Connex-Israel "confiscated land with portions closed entirely to Palestinians". *Veolia Transport's development of the
Jerusalem Light Rail Jerusalem Light Rail ( he, הרכבת הקלה בירושלים, ''HaRakevet HaKala Birushalayim'', ar, قطار القدس الخفيف, ''Qiṭār Al-Quds Al-Khafīf'') is a light rail system in Jerusalem. Currently, the Red Line is the o ...
system. In 2012, Veolia withdrew from a £4.7 Billion contract in north London, under pressure from a 2-year campaign by the No to Veolia Action Group (No2VAG). In addition to the objections of the "Dump Veolia" campaign, No2VAG also highlighted what it described as racist literature in Veolia's advertisements for drivers, which required completion of military service and a "mother tongue" of Hebrew. Several university organizations have supported anti-Veolia protests and boycotts, including at
Oberlin College Oberlin College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college and conservatory of music in Oberlin, Ohio. It is the oldest Mixed-sex education, coeducational liberal arts college in the United S ...
and at the
University of Sheffield , mottoeng = To discover the causes of things , established = – University of SheffieldPredecessor institutions: – Sheffield Medical School – Firth College – Sheffield Technical School – University College of Sheffield , type = Pu ...
. In 2013, the Sheffield Palestinian Solidarity Group succeeded in petitioning the university to end their waste management contract with Veolia.


Activities

Veolia Environmental Services collects, recycles and treats waste. Its activities cover liquid waste, solid waste, hazardous or non-hazardous waste, and refuse collected from household and industrial sources.


Company services

For private companies, it delivers the following services: * Management and exploitation of waste, including collection and advanced treatment of hazardous waste * Operation and maintenance of chemical, petrochemical, metallurgical and automotive plants and equipment, including high-pressure cleaning services and cryogenics In 2009, Veolia Environmental Services had 819,000 business customers in the world.


Public authority services

For local authorities and boroughs (for example in Paris, London, Alexandria, Singapore and Dresden), Veolia Environmental Services collects and sorts waste, transports it to treatment subsidiaries and plants, and operates landfill sites. Some contracts secured by Veolia Environmental Services in 2010: * A 6-year contract to recover energy from compost and recyclable materials from household waste in the Angers region of France. The contract was awarded by the Angers Loire metropolitan area, and is worth over €45 million. * The Hong Kong Government contracted Veolia Environnement to design, build and operate a sludge treatment plant. Veolia Environmental Services will operate the facility jointly with
Veolia Water Veolia Water (formerly Vivendi Water, originally Compagnie Générale des Eaux) is the water division of the French company Veolia Environnement and the world's largest supplier of water services. In 2009, the group posted revenues of €12.5 ...
. The contract is worth €20 million per year, and the site will eventually produce 20 MW of electricity through
energy recovery Energy recovery includes any technique or method of minimizing the input of energy to an overall system by the exchange of energy from one sub-system of the overall system with another. The energy can be in any form in either subsystem, but mos ...
techniques. * VES have a long lasting contract in Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK in partnership with the local authority council. Run from the side of its unique Energy Recovery Facility its head of collections is run by Shane Atkins with his team of contract supervisors including Wayne Fennel, Anita Fieldsend, Louisa Schofield, Andrew Buckley and Lewis Robinson.


Sorting and recycling

Veolia Environmental Services operates 352 centres for sorting and recycling. It treats and recycles waste to produce raw materials for industry. This includes collecting paper, cardboard, glass, plastics, wood, metal and waste electrical and electronic items.


Treatment and recovery of waste

A number of Veolia Environmental Services are based on specific treatment and waste recovery techniques and technologies. * Treatment of hazardous waste: incineration of organic liquid waste, recycling of solvents etc. * Storage and energy exploitation of non-hazardous waste. In 2008, Veolia Environmental Services launched a pilot facility for the production of biofuels from biogas emitted by non-hazardous waste stored at
Claye-Souilly Claye-Souilly () is a Communes of France, commune in the Seine-et-Marne Departments of France, department in the Île-de-France Regions of France, region in north-central France. Demography The inhabitants are called ''Clayois''. Personalities ...
near Paris, France. The pilot has been fully operational since September 2009, and produces enough biomethane to power Veolia Environnement's fleet of vehicles serving the Claye-Souilly site, resulting in a net savings of 882 metric tons of CO2 per year. * Treatment of urban and industrial sewage and its re-use in agriculture. * Incineration and energy exploitation of non-hazardous solids for urban heating networks. In 2009, Veolia sold: * €5.1 million MWh of electricity, equivalent to the electricity consumption of 900,000 Europeans, * 3.2 million MWh of thermal energy.


Hazardous waste treatment

Veolia Environmental Services is a specialist in the treatment of hazardous waste materials. These include toxic liquid wastes, battery acids and fluids, solvents and metals. It has 71 physical-chemical hazardous waste treatment facilities. In a demonstration of its business offer in this area, Veolia Environmental Services was contracted by the Ukrainian Environment Ministry to safely dispose of 1,000 tonnes of pesticide.


Veolia Environmental Services worldwide

Veolia Environmental Services is located in 32 countries around the world: * Europe (77% of revenues): France, UK, Ireland, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Ukraine, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia. * North America (14% of revenues) and South America : United States, Canada, Brazil, Mexico * Africa, Middle East, South America (2% of revenues): Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Israel, Qatar, UAE, Mexico, * Asia-Pacific (7% of revenues): China, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Australia.


See also

*
Ile-de-France Region Waste Management Observatory The Observatoire régional des déchets d'île-de-France (ORDIF), or Ile-de-France Region Waste Management Observatory in English, is a French non-profit organization created on 23 November 1992 as a joint initiative between the French government ...


References


External links


Official Veolia Environmental Services website

Veolia website
— ''parent corporation''.
Veolia — sustainable development website

Veolia Environnement Foundation website
{{Authority control Veolia Waste management companies of France Multinational companies headquartered in France French companies established in 2005