Recycling and waste management

Veolia specializes in the management of both liquid and solid hazardous and non-hazardous waste. Its expertise spans the entire waste lifecycle, from collection to recycling, in order to recover end products as materials and energy.
  • Production of energy, organic and raw materials from waste
  • Waste plastic recycling (SRF Production, Recycling to plastic flakes)
  • Waste management and logistics for municipalities and industrial clients (maintenance, cleaning, sewer cleaning, collection and transfer)
  • Sorting, treatment and recycling services for hazardous & non-hazardous waste by incineration, composting, landfilling & physical-chemical treatment
  • Biogas generation

Sludge treatment

Municipal sludge is the main potential secondary polluting source during sewage treatment since it contains a large number of organic pollutants and hazardous components such as pathogens, heavy metals and carcinogenic chemicals.

Waste-to-Energy

Veolia manages more than 90 Waste-to-Energy facilities in the world to treat municipal solid waste while creating renewable energy. Veolia has the expertise to adapt all the existing technologies to the different types of waste for an optimal heat and electricity generation taking into account the Low Heat Value of municipal solid waste.

Veolia’s comprehensive knowledge and expertise ensure:
1) Effective solutions
2) Technology and equipment selected according to waste characteristics
3) Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions

Veolia supports the growing demand for renewable energy and, wherever possible, develops solutions to supply green energy to its customers.

Heat
The energy generated by the combustion of non-recyclable waste produces electricity and heat for either local industry or domestic energy needs. Waste-to-energy therefore helps conserve fossil fuels, limit greenhouse gas emissions and reduce the volume of waste sent to landfills.
At all its waste-to-energy facilities, Veolia applies the standards established under European regulations, including compliance with threshold values for flue-gas emissions. 

Biogas
The development of efficient operational techniques and the systematic use of biogas have sharply increased the recovery of the biogas given off by waste fermentation. Veolia has patented an automated management system for biogas collection networks called Methacontrol®, which is used to continuously adjust the collection network’s operation. This process significantly increases the quantity of biogas collected compared with a manual adjustment method.
Veolia has also developed anaerobic digestion systems: dry for municipal waste, and wet for waste from the agricultural and food processing industries.
 
Solid recovered fuel
Veolia is involved in developing the sector for solid recovered fuel (SRF), also known as refuse-derived fuel (RDF). SRF is dry, non-hazardous waste that can be used as a fuel for co-incineration in facilities such as cement works furnaces. SRF provides a way to recover a significant fraction of municipal waste or non-hazardous industrial waste while at the same time meeting industry’s growing demand for energy.


Solutions:

  • Biogas recovery
  • Heat recovery
  • SFR recovery 

Materials recovery

The recovery of materials helps conserve primary natural resources by turning waste into replacement energy products. By developing recovery solutions that provide its customers with certified secondary raw materials, Veolia has become the benchmark producer of renewable resources.

WEEE
Veolia’s patented process uses several different technologies to identify and extract all plastic materials from waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) before grinding them into 10-millimeter pieces. Veolia’s industrial solutions combine flexibility and diversity while ensuring exemplary treatment traceability and achieving high recovery rates.
 
Plastics
The industrialized sorting process developed by Veolia identifies, separates and certifies the various types of plastics.
Veolia is able to guarantee recycled plastic material purity rates that exceed 99%, allowing manufacturers to install closed-loop recycling that significantly reduces their raw material supply costs. Visit PlastiLoop webpage for more information. 
 
Material and liquid effluent recycling
Veolia offers recycling solutions for metallic sludge from the automotive industry that combine recovery of metallic fractions with regeneration of high-value machining oils.
In this same industry, Veolia has attained such high-quality results in the field of solvent regeneration that it can provide its customers with a comprehensive service: it supplies the products used in the paint shops, collects used solvents, and regenerates them for reuse.
 
Compost
In order to improve the quality of organic soil conditioners, Veolia applies the Aerocontrol process at the composting facilities it operates. This process speeds up compost maturation while ensuring a homogeneous fermentation process.

 


Solutions:

  • Recovery and production of secondary raw materials
  • Production of recycled materials
  • Production of compost
  • ​Solvent recycling

Resource recovery

Veolia treats and recovers waste to reincorporate materials into industrial or agricultural production and generate energy.

Veolia uses the most innovative technologies to meet the needs of companies and public authorities for everything from waste sorting and recovery to the construction and operation of facilities. Veolia considers sustainability and long-term economic feasibility as well as respect for the environment and human health when a project is assessed or a new technology is implemented.

Materials sorting and recycling

Veolia devises innovative operational solutions to improve the way mixed non-hazardous waste is treated and recovered through dedicated sorting centers and customized technologies.

Veolia recovers many types of waste including paper, metal, wood and other material, at the same time as it prepares alternative fuels from hard-to-recycle waste.

Decommissioning

The process of decommissioning industrial facilities and mobile objects (aircraft, ships, trains and oil platforms) at the end of their working life poses economic, health and environmental challenges that require two complementary forms of expertise: the ability to decommission and deconstruct a site or object for easier management, and the ability to recycle the resulting waste and clean up ground pollution. 

Backed by considerable expertise in both these areas, Veolia can offer decommissioning project management services to ensure a better environmental, health and financial outcome. It does this by more accurately anticipating how the waste generated by decommissioning and dismantling a site or object can be recovered and treated.
 
Veolia offers the full range of services that may be needed: logistics, deconstruction, asbestos removal, waste profiling and reduction in waste volume, recovery of recyclable materials, treatment of both hazardous and non-hazardous residual waste, soil remediation and site restoration, traceability and monitoring, and more.  




Solutions:

  • Project management and engineering
  • Dismantling
  • Profiling of materials and liquid and solid waste
  • Asbestos removal
  • Materials sorting, packaging and recovery
  • Hazardous waste management
  • Treatment of non-recyclable waste
  • Land remediation
  • Site rehabilitation
  • Water treatment
  • ​Traceability and reporting 

Dismantling and recovery solutions

Veolia dismantles oil and gas platforms, ships, airplanes and industrial facilities in accordance with international environmental laws while safely recovering all recyclable materials.

1) Dismantling of oil and gas platforms

Veolia ensures its industrial customers cost effective, safe and environmentally friendly solutions to the logistical and safety challenges presented by dismantling offshore oil and gas platforms.
 

2) Ship dismantling

Thanks to its wealth of experience in dismantling oil and gas platforms, Veolia possesses unique expertise for dealing with the environmental issues raised by end-of-life ships, doing so in a cost-effective, safe and environmentally friendly way.


3) Airplane dismantling

Veolia is an expert in the field thanks to its subsidiary, Bartin Recycling Group. Veolia has created the first European facility for airplane dismantling at the Châteauroux airport in France.


4) End-of-life industrial facility dismantling

Buildings present safety and security liabilities for owners when they cease to be productive. The associated costs over time can mount up and it's often more economical to make a site available for sale or reuse. Working with a wide range of industrial customers, Veolia transforms disused buildings and plants into a profitable resource.

Soil remediation

Veolia’s waste management technology provides remediation services for polluted soil resulting from industrial accidents or after a site has been vacated due to heavily polluting industrial activity.

1) Tailored treatment processes and services
Veolia offers solutions that are tailored to the needs of customers, whether soil remediation in the operation of an industrial facility is a temporary necessity, or part of a large-scale restoration project for municipal governments; our solutions ensure that full use is made of biological, physical, chemical and heat treatment processing and application.

Veolia meets the demands of both municipalities and companies for cleaning, dismantling, transferring and treating contaminated building equipment.

Our services assure that sustainable means are used in the treating of methane, leachate and industrial wastewater generated by the soil remediation process.

2) Innovative solutions
Veolia has researched and developed phytoremediation with CNRS (French National Scientific Research Centre)  to restore soil contaminated by sludge spraying.

Hazardous waste treatment

Veolia is a leader in hazardous waste safe treatment and disposal in USA, Australia, Europe and China. Most of the biggest industrial groups in the world use Veolia hazardous waste expert handling. Its professional technology in treating, recycling and recovering useful materials ensures that the hazardous waste treatment process is covered in its entirety.

1) National and corporate compliances
Veolia uses management systems in compliance with the most stringent national legislation. This system also allows to track the waste from its collection to its final treatment guaranteeing complete transparency for our clients in compliance with our own corporate standards.

2) From separate collection to appropriate recycling
Hazardous waste such as paints, solvents, resins, residual oils, heavy metals, batteries, fluorescent tubes, contaminated packages and Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) needs to be collected separately to allow for recycling and resource recovery.

3) Comprehensive hazardous waste management
Veolia ensures comprehensive hazardous waste management in collection, transport, recovery, physicochemical treatment, incineration or landfill disposal. Its services aim to provide clients with the safe treatment of hazardous waste while fulfilling all reporting and transparency requirements.

Recycling

In accordance with national standards, Veolia recovers materials contained in industrial baths, effluents, sludge, sewage and other waste using innovative treatment methods. This can also include components, solvents, hydrocarbons and polluting packages out of industrial agents - under economically viable conditions.

Incineration

Incineration is the most direct way to treat and dispose of hazardous waste. With mature and reliable technology that adapts through its design to every type of waste, Veolia’s Hazardous Waste to Energy facilities can help customers meet stable operation, easy maintenance, reasonable economics, scientific management, environmental protection and health and safety goals.

  • High Temperature Incineration is proven safe for hazardous organic chemicals and materials not suitable for other treatments;
  • It's considered as the most environmentally friendly choice for chemicals and high-density materials: some waste including persistent organic pollutants and high-density materials must be destroyed with the highest level of security in accordance with the law and commercial security;
  • Incineration under high temperature is widely used and effective. This process – with temperatures above 1100°C – achieves a destruction rate of 99.99% and is the best way to thoroughly destroy hazardous waste, whether it be excess and expired products, laboratory waste and reagents, electronic waste or contaminated soil.

Stabilization and landfilling

It is essential that the safe disposal of elements from hazardous waste is done without dispersing pollutants so as to protect the environment and public health. Veolia stabilizes these pollutants and stores them in secure dedicated landfills.

Non-recyclable hazardous waste such as fly and bottom ashes have to first be solidified so as to stabilize them, usually through the use of cement. They then can be safely disposed of in secure dedicated landfills.

An on-site laboratory tests samples of stabilized waste in order to ensure lasting stability before it enters the landfill, while upstream and downstream surface water, groundwater and vegetation is constantly monitored for traces of contamination.

Veolia’s hazardous waste dedicated landfills are highly engineered and managed to meet stringent environmental standards.

Landfills

Veolia manages more than 150 landfills in the world. Its landfill management can effectively protect soil and underground water and limit the emission of greenhouse gases by incorporating specifically developed high-density landfill technology: impermeable membrane lining, leachate collection and treatment systems, recycling of landfill gas and strict environmental monitoring.

Veolia’s comprehensive knowledge and expertise ensure:
1) Global landfill management system
2) High-density landfill technology
3) Bioreactor landfills
4)  Landfill gas capture and recovery
5)  Overall environmental monitoring

 

Landfill-Gas-to-Energy

Landfill gas is a mix of methane and carbon dioxide. Methane is a flammable toxic green house gas twenty times more damaging to the climate than carbon dioxide. Instead of going in the atmosphere and becoming a green house gas that's harmful to the environment, it can be collected in every landfill and used to produce renewable energy.

Landfill gas farming and valorisation is a major component in the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Those landfills equipped with Veolia’s gas collection and treatment systems have seen their waste storage increased by 20% in the last 5 years.

WEEE sorting and recycling

Veolia has created a specific expertise in treating and recycling WEEE in an environment friendly way from both industrial and domestic origin, such as computers, televisions, refrigerators, air conditioning units, cables, phones, mobile phones, etc, while ensuring their traceability.

Veolia employs innovative solutions to sort and recycle WEEE, which contain a mix of components including some hazardous ones.

Veolia provides a complete range of services, from on-site delivery of containers to reporting and remediation, treatment and recovery at certified sites.