Addressing a meeting at COP26 this week, Mr Frérot declared that a price needed to be put on carbon, and added: “Polluting must cost more than not polluting or cleaning up. As soon as the cost of cleaning up is lower than the cost of polluting, businesses, cities and individuals will change their behaviour and start cleaning up.”
The event, organised by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, brought together different stakeholders on the theme ‘boosting industry ambition and action to achieve a net zero goal by 2050 and strengthen climate resilience’.
Solutions
Mr Frérot presented three solutions: the circular economy, methane capture and battery recycling. He said that Veolia is committed with all its stakeholders to making the changes necessary to limit global warming to +1.5°C and achieve “net zero emissions” of greenhouse gases by 2050.
Advocating recycling and resource use, he said: “We all know that extracting, processing, and transporting raw materials to make new products emits large amounts of greenhouse gases. And if we replace these raw materials by using waste transformed into new raw materials, we will emit much less GHGs.”
Extracting, processing, and transporting raw materials to make new products emits large amounts of greenhouse gases
– Antoine Frérot
He noted that using recycled plastic to make a plastic bottle emits 70% less greenhouse gases than virgin raw materials.
The CEO also said that Veolia would capture the methane emitted by all of its landfills around the world, and gave the example of Brazil where it has inaugurated three new power plants using landfill biogas as a primary energy source.
Batteries
Veolia is “stepping up” its innovation efforts in the field of recycling electric vehicle batteries and is aiming to recycle 100% of the metals from used batteries. It is already extracting “ultra pure lithium” in the form of lithium carbonate, said Mr Frérot.
“We will not achieve carbon neutrality without increasing our R&D efforts. This is one of the major responsibilities of companies: they must innovate more, for example to recycle batteries or capture and reuse carbon. Since we will not be able to avoid all carbon emissions, we will need to be able to capture all residual emissions.”
UK strategy
Also alongside COP26, Anna Laurent, head of strategy for Veolia in the UK, participated in a round table entitled “Reduce, recycle and reuse: how the waste sector contributes to net zero”. Ms Laurent referred to the “political actions” to be implemented in the United Kingdom “to support private investment in recycling infrastructure, essential to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, and its energy recovery”.
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