The sixth report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), released in March 2023, confirms that the Earth's temperature continues to rise, reaching its highest level in the past 125,000 years during the 2011–2020 decade. Scientific experts estimate that by 2030, the planet will have warmed by 1.5°C compared to pre-industrial times, regardless of immediate efforts to reduce global CO₂ emissions. We are already living in the era of climate change and its consequences.

In order to preserve the future of life on Earth, the IPCC outlines a path to cap emissions growth in the short term and reduce emissions in the long term, with the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. Energy, whose consumption has been exponential since 1850, has a crucial role to play. While it is predominantly fossil-based today and releases billions of tons of carbon that had been sequestered over millions of years on Earth, the group of scientists estimates that up to 77 percent of global energy needs could be met by biomass, solar, wind, hydroelectricity, geothermal, and marine energy, alongside the necessary energy savings. This massive shift to clean energy sources represents the greatest potential for short-term reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Modifying the energy system is possible: the declining costs of renewable energies and green technologies observed in recent years, from solar to wind, can facilitate the energy transition, much like the shift from wood to coal accelerated the system’s use in the mid-nineteenth century. However, unlike what happened then, this is still subject to strong political will, especially given the urgency of the situation.

The decarbonization of the energy mix has indeed begun to permeate public policies. The European Union goes so far as to make it an element of leadership: the Council of the European Union launched a step-by-step adoption process in 2021 for the so-called “Fit for 55” package, which includes thirteen legislative proposals defining the objective of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030 compared to 1990. Among these proposals, the promotion of renewable energies is central, also on the agenda of the REPowerEU plan in 2022, alongside the strengthening of natural carbon sinks, the end of sales of internal combustion engine cars by 2035, the reduction of energy bills for buildings, and the overhaul of energy taxation.

On the ground, things are changing. Germany is one of the first countries to have clearly shifted its energy policy: while renewable energies represented 6.89 percent of electricity production in 2000, they now provide 49 percent of German electricity in 2022. Other countries such as the United Kingdom, the United States, and China have caught up in a matter of years. By introducing a carbon tax in 2013 and launching low-carbon electricity production support programs in 2014, England has succeeded in making renewable energy the country's primary source of electricity in 2020. For the first time in the first five months of 2023, solar and wind power in the United States have surpassed coal in electricity production. Thanks to subsidies, but also to more flexible legislation in certain states, states such as Texas, a solar energy champion, and California, which aims for 100 percent renewable electricity by 2045, stand out. In China, the capacity for wind and solar energy production has increased tenfold since 2010, and the country holds a large share of industrial production of photovoltaic panels (63 percent of cells, for example) and wind turbines (over 40 percent).

Even in France, the situation is changing. Because “France has not been a promoter of renewable energy, it is lagging behind compared to all European countries,” says Jacques Vernier, director of the Agency for Ecological Transition (Ademe) from 1994 to 1997. The prevalence of nuclear power has reduced our fossil energy consumption, but it has also slowed down renewable energy development, and France is still behind on its objectives. However, the development is nevertheless exponential: “In 1996, when I wrote the Que-sais je? book, I noted that there were only three wind turbines in France, in the Aude region,” remembers Jacques Vernier. “In 2023, there were 8,000.” However, the global equation is not yet solved: fossil energy consumption continues to increase. According to the International Energy Agency, global natural gas demand could increase by 28 percent and oil demand by 17 percent by 2050.

That is why many experts, like historian Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, reject the term “energy transition” in favor of “energy stacking,” with each new energy source being added to the mix of each country throughout history. How can we avoid this scenario and fundamentally reverse the trend? Some regions are beginning to outline an “energy unstacking,” similar to what is happening in Europe and even North America, which is reaching a plateau. With the solutions it has developed and the innovations it is working on, the Veolia group can amplify this movement. This is the objective that Estelle Brachlianoff placed at the heart of the ReSource plan in 2022: to reduce energy consumption and increase the group's green energy production.

Most importantly, this new infrastructure is also beneficial for the environment: coal dust emissions have been significantly reduced, and fifty thousand tons of CO₂ are avoided each year, equivalent to fifty million round trips between Paris and Lille by high-speed train. It also contributes to the decarbonization of industries, such as in Lorraine, where Solvay has been producing soda ash, an industrial by-product with multiple uses, from the manufacture of glass to toothpaste for over a hundred years. The chemical manufacturer has partnered with Veolia to replace three coal-fired boilers with a boiler equipped with two furnaces that operate on solid recovered fuels (SRF), waste that cannot be recycled. As carbon quotas are gradually applied to European industry, this will support the site's competitiveness and maintain employment by reducing the carbon footprint of industrial activity by half and eliminating the annual importation of 200,000 tons of coal. 

The development of district heating and cooling networks today aims to maximize the use of every bit of energy by sharing energy from decentralized production locations. In 2023, Veolia was entrusted with the operation of the Paris-Saclay network, a unique installation in Europe combining deep geothermal energy and the recovery of waste heat from the CNRS supercomputer and the cooling network. The system aims to double the delivery of heat and cooling to support the urban campus's real estate development.

Recovered energy is at the heart of a paradigm shift with immense potential both from an ecological and energy sovereignty perspective. “In the past, we operated in a mode where we produced energy when we needed it,” says Gad Pinto, director of local energy loop activities at Veolia. “However, when we produce energy in this way, a lot of energy is wasted. For a long time, this didn't bother anyone: why bother recovering it when the primary energy source is virtually free? Today, that is no longer the case: we seek to recover heat from data centers, wastewater, industrial processes in the steel, chemical, cement, and agri-food sectors, etc. Furthermore, when relying on the national gas or electricity grid, if it is cut off from certain supplies such as Russian gas, a company or community finds itself in a vulnerable situation. The development of local solutions helps address this.”

Scaling up to all territories requires the capacity to integrate different expertise, which is gradually happening, as measured by Annaïg Pesret-Bougaran, director of the Arc-en-Ciel plant: “In 1993, our plant was a completely innovative project, to the point that three subsidiaries of the group formed a partnership to respond to the call for tenders, with each bringing their expertise in incineration, waste sorting, and district heating. Today, everything is more integrated thanks to our experience.” The novel technology is gradually being industrialized to have a greater impact.

Toward Carbon Capture and Recycling

The capture, storage, and recycling of carbon are crucial mitigation options, even with maximum energy savings and a rapid transition to a greener energy mix. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) affirms the essential role of these processes, particularly in the chemical and cement production sectors, stating that they are necessary to achieve carbon neutrality goals—especially those aiming to limit global warming to 2°C by 2100. Veolia is exploring the application of carbon capture solutions in its waste recovery facilities, especially as carbon capture is becoming economically viable. Just five to seven years ago, there was a significant gap between the cost of carbon and the cost of capture, making it economically unfeasible to capture and store carbon. However, things are changing, with the price of carbon per ton increasing from 37.45 euros in February 2021 to nearly 90 euros in March 2023. Additionally, some countries, such as the UK and the US, are implementing mechanisms to incentivize the development of carbon capture infrastructure, whose costs are decreasing with economies of scale and the development of new technologies.

While any currently captured CO₂ is primarily intended for sequestration in underground geological reservoirs, Veolia aims to go further and valorize it. Isolated CO₂ molecules can be used in various industrial applications, such as concrete and cement production, carbonated beverages, and low-carbon fuels. Veolia has partnered with the Collège de France, the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), and the Inter-municipal Sanitation Syndicate of the Paris Agglomeration (SIAAP) for research and development projects to transform CO₂ emitted by wastewater treatment plants into useful products.

The goal is to modify the molecular bonds through CO₂ chemistry to produce formic acid, used by the perfume industry, and methanol, a versatile solvent used in the production of varnishes and paints, in addition to biogas from wastewater. This alliance between fundamental, technological, and industrial research demonstrates the experimental stage of these efforts.

Overall, the solutions outlined here illustrate once again that the international climate and energy crises, which require a transformation of our production systems and habits, are resolved at the local level by replicating solutions developed worldwide. Veolia's ability to adapt and replicate solutions has made it a global champion in ecological transformation, a position that has been built patiently over decades since 1853.

If we look at the timeline of the history of energy from the beginning of humanity, we cannot say that the past two centuries have been characterized by energy savings. On the contrary, as noted by Patrick Criqui, a research director at CNRS (French research center), “from 1900 to 1950, global energy consumption doubled, from one to two billion tons of oil equivalent (known as “toe”), then there was an acceleration and a six-fold increase between 1950 and 2010. It only took sixty years to go from two to twelve billion toe: just an instant on the scale of human history.”¹ And it is not over. In the 2022 report of the International Energy Agency (IEA), the scenario based on current policies predicts that total energy demand will increase by 21 percent and electricity consumption will increase by 50 percent by 2040².

Of course, these numbers hide very disparate local realities, as since the end of the twentieth century, it is mainly emerging countries that have been driving the growth in energy demand. Among developed countries, too, there are different models of energy consumption. The model of low-density, primary energy-producing territories like the United States, Canada, or Australia is characterized by high demand for transportation and energy-intensive household, automotive, and industrial equipment. On the other hand, European countries and Japan differ by having a higher population density and lower energy resources, resulting in a per capita consumption that is half as much as the previous model’s. France is one of these countries whose history has been marked by more moderate energy consumption. In 1913, it already consumed a quarter of American needs, as Alain Beltran, a research director at CNRS, reminds us. During the first oil shock, for a base consumption of 100 in France, Americans were at 260, Great Britain at 120, and Japan at 86. Alain Beltran concludes, “Out of necessity, our country has never truly ‘wasted’ its energy.”³

However, the main efforts of French policies have long focused on ensuring the security of the energy supply. The question is still far from resolved, as according to the IEA around 775 million people in the world still do not have access to electricity in 2023⁴. But in order for the Net Zero emissions scenario to become a reality by 2050, as recommended by the IEA and IPCC, it is imperative to go further in combining supply security with energy savings and the promotion of renewable energies. “Current high energy prices highlight the benefits of increasing energy efficiency,” notes the International Energy Agency, “and encourage changes in behavior and technology in certain countries to reduce energy consumption. Measures to improve energy efficiency can have dramatic effects—today's light bulbs consume at least four times less energy than those sold twenty years ago—but there is still a lot to be done.”

To amplify its effect, Eric Bardelli, Technical and Project Director of Veolia's Energy business in France, shares his belief in the importance of local public-private partnerships to meet the challenge of energy savings: “The key to success in embarking on the path of energy performance is to identify methodologies applicable to each region to save time and be more efficient. Veolia's expertise and know-how in energy issues allow us to take a broader view and develop a collaborative vision in which local elected officials play a decisive role.” Energy sobriety and flexibility must therefore become predominant in the future, following the path laid out by the responses implemented after the oil shocks, whose good habits we have too quickly put aside.

Energy Savings, an Accelerating Activity in the Middle East

Paradoxically, it was in the United Arab Emirates that Hubgrade services would progress. This is paradoxical because one does not spontaneously imagine that it is in oil-rich countries, where energy is cheap and abundant, that offers to save energy would develop most rapidly. Yet, not all Emirates are alike—and Dubai has no oil. That is why, in the early 2000s, its princes invested in service activities, with the ambition to make their land a shining city at the heart of the United Arab Emirates’ international influence.

Majid Al-Futtaim, who had created and managed an empire in utility services and had seen a Bedouin people transition from fishing for oysters and searching for pearls to a new civilization based on oil in just a few decades, was a visionary, convinced that commitment to sustainability would be a key element in his country's international acceptability. To achieve his ambitions, he partnered with Dalkia in 2002 in a joint venture, MAF-Dalkia, which would later become Enova.

“Veolia found a local partner who was committed and willing, which allowed the expertise to be developed and replicated in other geographic areas,” says Anne Le Guennec, former CEO of Enova. “With MAF, we found a great partner who trusted us with their entire portfolio and with whom we advanced in co-construction. They opened up a playing field for us, and we worked on it together.” This application field was considerable from the outset, from shopping centers, amusement parks, and hospitality to residential areas. Then, driven by the joint venture's desire to make its activity profitable, it transitioned from operating only Majid Al Futtaim's assets to offering building services on behalf of third parties.

Today, environmental reputation issues have materialized, and Enova is mobilizing its expertise in cost reduction in hospitals, airports, cinemas, hotels, and shopping centers in eight countries: the UAE, Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, Egypt, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. And there is no shortage of projects. “In the Middle East, reducing building cooling consumption is the main focus of our clients’ energy savings,” explains Renaud Capris, CEO of Enova, as temperatures sometimes exceed 50°C (122°F) in this part of the world.

Is Energy Flexibility a Major Challenge for the Decades to Come?

Many observers believe that today the question of energy management, i.e., how much energy we consume, is as important as when we consume it. The issue gained national importance in France with the implementation of the EcoWatt system during the winter of 2022–2023, a kind of “electricity forecast” that aimed to inform users in real time about consumption on the electricity grid in order to avoid consumption peaks that could lead to a network failure. Launched by the French electricity network operator RTE, in partnership with the Agency for the Environment and Energy Management (Ademe), EcoWatt was born out of specific problems related to the simultaneous increase in energy consumption in winter and the decrease in French nuclear production. These conditions could easily be repeated in the coming years, since renewable energies such as wind and solar power, which are expected to play an increasing role in our energy supply, have the particular characteristic of facing significant production variations. The nuclear power plant itself tends to become intermittent, even if only marginally, but the variation is more controllable in this case.

In summary, the volatility of electricity prices and availability requires us to rethink our approach to energy consumption. Some French people are already familiar with the concept of energy flexibility, as around thirteen million of them benefit from off-peak tariffs and therefore heat their water heaters at night to use the water the next morning. On the scale of a tertiary building, this comes down to encouraging similar good practices, such as programming the charging of electric vehicles during low consumption periods, operating equipment alternately, and starting heating earlier in the morning. These habits need to be automated through smart grid systems—intelligent electricity networks. This is where Veolia's Hubgrade solution, for example, comes in, capable of analyzing personnel usage and anticipating consumption peaks, as well as alerting users to malfunctions and controlling building flows such as heating, hot water, ventilation, and air conditioning. Not to mention energy production, as many buildings are now equipped with this capacity through photovoltaic panels or geothermal energy. The building then becomes a full-fledged player in the electrical grid.

To achieve this flexibility, it is not only necessary to change the energy paradigm in people's minds but also to be accompanied by experts in the field, whose expertise ranges from anticipation and certification to ensuring network stability. This is the case for Flexcity, a Franco-Belgian startup created in 2012 under the name Actility that was acquired by Veolia in 2019. For Flexcity, the new energy situation should push industrial and tertiary groups to think not only as energy consumers but also as energy brokers. “We help companies thrive in a world with high electricity volatility, consume and produce energy at the right time, and pay attention to the overall balance of the network,” explains Arnout Aertgeerts, Chief Executive Officer at Flexcity. By aligning demand and production, companies like Flexcity hope to correct negative energy prices in the wholesale market, which are a signal that non-flexible production is significant while demand is low. In such cases, some will have to pay to produce energy, and conversely, others will be paid to consume it.

With the first industrial revolution, the development of our modern societies was made possible by access to coal, an energy source that was more abundant and less costly than previous ones such as water, wood, and horses. This transition to a radically new world first occurred to address supply difficulties: the wood crisis, driven by population growth and increased needs, accelerated the use of “charcoal from the earth,” or fossil charcoal: coal. Historian Fernand Braudel recounts in L'Identité de la France:¹ “Our forests, although abundant, could not withstand intensive exploitation: wood was used for heating houses, cooking, and, in the form of charcoal, for the production of cast iron, iron, and steel. It was also an essential material for clog makers, woodworkers, and the construction of cars, plows, and houses, as well as boats and ships. Blast furnaces, forges, and foundries were not the only ‘fire factories’—we must also include glassworks, breweries, and lime kilns.” Moreover, for the historian, if England “used stone coal early on, even just for heating London, and if it proved to be a pioneer in the use of coke, it is partly because it was forced to do so due to the depletion of its forest resources.” The decrease in the cost of coal only came later—and it then surpassed wood before being joined by oil and gas. However, let us retain the essential point from this original moment: it is a need that, once again, before technology or even cost, became the primary driving force behind technological and social development.

Even in an era of abundance, the importance of securing the energy supply has not disappeared; on the contrary, it has become more pronounced in response to needs considered increasingly essential and on which society's life has become more dependent. This attention is particularly evident in countries that are less well-endowed with fossil resources, such as France, an importer of coal and later of gas and oil, or countries in Eastern Europe, whose energy dependence on oil or gas-producing countries remains strong even today.

Before shifting to address energy savings or concerns about decarbonizing the energy mix to contribute to the fight against climate change, it was primarily the need to ensure the security of the energy supply and continuity of service that was at the heart of users’ concerns. It is within this context that Veolia's first expertise was developed.

Diversification of Heating Sources Accelerated by Oil Crises

As early as the 1960s, the very first incinerators capable of supplying heat networks through waste combustion were built, foreshadowing their transformation into “energy recovery units” (ERUs) in the 1980s and 1990s. Technically, some incinerators had already been able to recover energy for a long time: in 1907, the Issy-les-Moulineaux plant produced electricity using a turbo-alternator, and the Tours incinerator, built by the Society of Enterprises for Industry and Agriculture (SEPIA) in the 1920s, produced both electricity and bricks made from the ashes. Inaugurated in 1968, the Villejean plant took things a step further by both producing electricity and heating a part of the Rennes metropolis—the first plant of its kind!

The Breton Heating Exploitation Company (SOBREC) was created in December 1964 to operate the urban heating network in North Rennes. It was a subsidiary of the Compagnie Générale de Chauffe, 40 percent of which was owned by the Compagnie Générale des Eaux from 1967 onwards. Expanding the range of services it can provide to an area, the Compagnie Générale des Eaux fully integrated CGC into its group in 1980. It had already developed its own energy activities; in Rhône-Alpes, enterprising teams had established ECHM (Eau et Chaleur de Haute-Montagne) in 1963 to meet the water and energy supply needs of emerging Alpine ski resorts.

Indeed, “the skills required to maintain water and heat networks, even boiler rooms, were found to be similar, especially when considering the specifics of the mountain climate, from snow removal to coping with large temperature variations,” says Bruno Godfroy, Deputy General Manager of the Water France business unit. A few years later, in 1979, just before its full integration into CGE, Compagnie Générale de Chauffe produced a detailed report on its activities, demonstrating how the company had developed in response to energy crises caused by oil shocks. It had implemented various solutions such as geothermal heat, alternative fuels, heat from incinerators, heat pumps, and photovoltaic panels. CGC deployed these solutions throughout France and internationally, including in Belgium, Germany, Great Britain, Switzerland, the United States, and even hospitals in Saudi Arabia. It also considered developing energy from thermal power plant waste and photovoltaic panels, which were already being used to produce hot water for a holiday village in Martinique. Through a rudimentary remote monitoring system it had developed, precursor to the later Veolia Hubgrade centers, CGC's agents could remotely control temperature, consumption, and potential alarms across equipped networks in cities such as Rennes, Rungis, and Lille.

The contracts signed in 1979 represented 46,300 kilowatts for heat production and 11,100 kilowatts for cooling, serving not only private individuals but also hospitals, the Post Office and Telecommunications administration, and hotel centers. As of the 1960s, CGC managed sixteen municipal waste treatment plants and in 1969 it installed its first geothermal system in the priority urbanization zone of the Almont department in Melun, which provided hot water for nearly three thousand residents. This was followed by installations at the Mont-de-Marsan air base, 826 housing units, a shopping center, a gendarmerie barracks, a nursery school, and a daycare center in Blagnac. During the 1980s, as a result of the oil crises, district heating networks gradually moved away from oil and turned massively toward natural gas or waste recovery energy.

In the 1980s and 1990s, incineration plants increasingly shifted their focus toward energy production. According to Patrick Hasbroucq, incineration activity used to be primarily about the destruction of waste, but since the 1980s, incineration has represented only a small part of the installations, alongside smoke treatment and energy production in the form of heat and/or electricity. Attention is now focused on the environmental and energy performance of the plants. However, there is still considerable room for improvement in this area.

Currently, only 62 percent of district heating networks in France are supplied by renewable and waste recovery energy. In 2021, a report from the Court of Auditors emphasized the importance of private operators in this activity and the benefits that individuals can derive from it. Due to the significant investments required to create a district heating network, the majority of public networks (80 percent) are operated through public service delegation. District heating and cooling networks supplied by more than 50 percent renewable energy allow users to benefit from a reduced VAT (5.5 percent) on the energy supply portion of their bills. These strong incentives encourage further development and greening of these networks.

In Central and Eastern Europe, Expertise Developed to Meet the Challenge of Energy Sovereignty

Let's head east, about eight hundred kilometers from Italy, to Central and Eastern Europe. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the former countries of the Eastern Bloc have gradually embraced market economies. Today, these countries, known as Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs), including Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic, have had to undergo profound changes in their understanding of public services. Over the course of the 1990s, the population had to adjust to the fact that previously free services now had to be paid for in order to increase their efficiency and reliability.

One of these services was energy supply. At the end of the twentieth century, the young democracies of Eastern Europe faced another colossal challenge: how to ensure energy sovereignty when almost everything had to be built from scratch? While strategies and public policies varied, one constant emerged: each state relied on local or foreign companies to lay the foundations for this desired independence and to apply for integration into the European Union.

During this period, Veolia accompanied these countries in reducing their dependence on Russian coal and gas and contributed to their improved energy autonomy. In 2022, the group supplied energy to twelve million inhabitants in the region. Veolia has gained the trust of many countries thanks to its industrial legitimacy as an energy producer and distributor. But it's not just about that. “We provide solutions that are sustainable. Our values are society, hygiene, safety, and transparency,” says Philippe Guitard, Director of Central and Eastern Europe at Veolia. This trustworthiness has paid off; for example, Veolia's revenue in the Czech Republic reached 1.5 billion euros in 2022, even though the company had not yet established itself in the country in 1997.

Urban district heating networks are the primary activity through which Veolia has established a long-term presence in the CEECs. In cities such as Warsaw, Poznan, and Lodz in Poland, Bratislava in Slovakia, Budapest and Pecs in Hungary, and Prague and Ostrava in the Czech Republic, Veolia operates and modernizes thermal power plants. “In these countries, about 90 percent of medium and large cities are heated by collective district heating networks due to harsh winters. The current challenges are to secure heat supply and reduce the carbon footprint of the power plants,” says Renaud Capris, CEO of Enova, former Director of Operations in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, and Hungary.

Over time, the environmental performance of heat production units has been improved, as the standards of the 1990s were not strict enough. The CEECs’ accession to the European Union in the early 2000s forced them to adopt the same rules as Western European countries, which required significant renovation work. “There is a proactive desire to gradually phase out coal-fired power plants. The city of Pecs in Hungary, with a population of about 200,000 inhabitants, has successfully converted its entire district heating network to biomass, completely eliminating coal and gas. Straw is collected from local farmers, as are wood residues,” explains Renaud Capris. Most CEECs are in the process of transitioning to cleaner solutions such as biogas and biomass in order to move away from coal. “The goal is to offer alternatives at a reasonable cost for consumers,” Renaud Capris adds.

In 1883, the famous decree by Eugène Poubelle already provided for selective waste sorting at the source: one container for organic waste, one for paper and rags, and one for glass, earthenware, or oyster shells. Little accustomed to the act of sorting, which was previously carried out by scavengers, particularly ragpickers, Parisians quickly abandoned this practice, which no one would reconsider for over a hundred years. In 1992, the Royal Law sought to once again encourage local authorities to implement selective sorting of packaging in order to promote the recycling of raw materials, but the integration of the spirit of the law into customs ultimately took about thirty years. It must be said that its implementation is particularly complex: sorting initially required distinguishing between different types of packaging, as not all of them are recyclable. Initially, sorting rules were limited to bottles, PET resin containers (used for example in mineral water bottles), and HDPE resin, used for laundry detergent bottles. While this sector has been successful, it “has not allowed for the development of recycling of other plastic packaging such as trays, pots, or films,” explains Citeo¹, the eco-organization specializing in packaging.

The Difficult Transition to Sorting: The French Example

The transition from convictions to actions is sometimes difficult. And it was particularly difficult in France. On August 27, 1998, the newspaper Le Monde headlined “Selective Waste Sorting Struggles to Become a Part of French Culture." The first time that the French began sorting was in 1977 with experiments in glass sorting, followed by old newspaper sorting in the late 1980s. More significant initiatives emerged in the early 1990s, but by 1998 only 6 percent of waste was being sorted in France.

The Limits of Prioritizing Local Action

Local authorities are at the forefront of waste management and the implementation of selective collections. However, only ten thousand out of France's thirty-six thousand municipalities have done so, which is less than one third. It must be said that the selective sorting system requires significantly more funding than landfilling, which has been prevalent in most rural areas, and municipalities often hesitate to assume this cost. Hence, there has been a sometimes excessive reliance on voluntary drop-off from users, a system that is not always effective.

The article in Le Monde also highlights the organizational complexity of sorting and how it weighs on the behaviors of users: “Selective waste sorting imposes a daily discipline. How can we encourage users to remove the caps from bottles, often made of a resin that differs from the container's resin”—especially when the rules can vary from one municipality to another?

As Franck Pilard, Sales Director at Veolia Recycling and Waste Recovery, explains, “In line with French decentralization, municipalities and intermunicipal authorities were given latitude to act. Each one could sovereignly decide on the best collection scheme. As a result, due to historical and contingent reasons, we have had various configurations, and indeed, when you moved or went on vacation, there was no continuity in sorting instructions, and even the colors of the bins were not harmonized.” Some municipalities provided special blue bins for paper recycling, while others did not separate paper from the yellow bin. These blue containers would then accept all types of paper...except for receipts, envelopes with windows, photo paper, wallpaper, or gift wrapping paper. For packaging, much of which is made from composite materials, there have long been numerous exceptions depending on where you live: egg cartons, yogurt pots, toothpaste tubes, plastic films, plastic bags, pizza boxes…all of it created confusion for consumers when it came to their bins. Not to mention a whole list of specific waste that consumers still have to take to dedicated collectors: medications, batteries, light bulbs, clothing, toys, electronic waste, etc.

From Waste Reduction to a New Relationship with Objects

“Even though the amount of household waste per capita in France tends to stagnate or even decrease (around 350 kilograms per year per person), the overall quantity of waste and its unequal distribution continue to increase. Citizens of the United States produce twice as much household waste as inhabitants of Europe and three to four times more than those in poor countries,” note researchers François Jarrige and Thomas Le Roux in an interview published in the magazine Mouvement⁴. According to a report by the OECD published in June 2022, plastic waste could even triple between 2019 and 2060, from 353 to 1,014 million tons. This growth in waste is accompanied by a global increase and instability in the prices of raw materials since the war in Ukraine, which causes supply difficulties for various industries. Under these conditions, sorting and recycling are crucial, but they are not enough to solve the waste issue.

Energy on Earth is not unlimited, and materials cannot be recycled indefinitely. “For some materials—plastic, paper, and cardboard, for instance—there is significant degradation over the course of the recycling cycle,” explains Flore Berlingen, essayist and former director of Zero Waste France.⁵ “This means that we have to add virgin material, and we cannot manufacture the same object from the initial one. Furthermore, even for materials that recycle better, such as glass or aluminum, there is still resource consumption in terms of energy or water that needs to be taken into account.” Flore Berlingen therefore advocates for the improvement and standardization of recycling, with more mono-material products, but also for an end to the consumption of disposable products.

Since the 2000s, waste reduction has become a focal point for the European Union, which included it in its 2008 directive. In France, the Anti-Waste Law for a Circular Economy (AGEC) of 2020 is based on the hierarchy of the 3 Rs: reduction, reuse, and recycling. This law crystallizes a trend that is already under way in a small sector of society and is symbolized by the zero waste movement, which has been spreading since the 2010s. Contrary to what its name suggests, The intention of zero waste is not to eliminate waste entirely and immediately, but rather to actively pursue and work towards achieving this ideal. The French figurehead of the movement is Béa Johnson. This famous blogger became known for her book Zero Waste (2013), in which she explains how she and her family produce only one jar of waste per year and have achieved a 40 percent reduction in their expenses. Jars and bulk items replace disposable supermarket packaging, solid soap replaces shower gel bottles, reusable cotton swabs are introduced...disposables disappear from the homes of followers of this lifestyle. In France, there is a certain enthusiasm for it, as 81 percent of French people had already heard of zero waste by the year 2020, and for 91 percent of them, reducing waste is important.

However, mentalities are struggling to change in this regard as well. Decades of overconsumption, the decrease in the price of certain daily products, and the allure of ready-to-dispose items continue to generate wasteful practices, sometimes unbeknownst to consumers themselves. During her studies on consumer psychology, which resulted in the collective work From Waste to Sobriety (2019), Valérie Guillard observed this form of denial among people. “Today, we mainly associate waste with food waste,” she says.

“It is not a term we use for objects; people believe they don't throw them away, and in a way, it's true. They accumulate them without repairing them—they put them aside—so for them, it is not considered waste. But in reality, they don't give away their possessions and they don't reuse them, so yes, it is waste.”

According to Valérie Guillard, we have used objects too much as a way to socially distinguish ourselves, to define ourselves. Even though disparities exist between cities and rural areas, everyone wastes in their own way. The researcher explores the new relationships with objects that cross certain layers of society, especially the care we give to things. “We have lost the habit of maintaining our possessions,” she notes. “We don't know how to do it anymore. Many things are so cheap that it is not profitable to repair them. And it takes time to mend clothing! Who still knows how to do that? We don't think about it because we are not used to doing it: cleaning the washing machine filter, inflating bicycle tires, greasing the chain.” Despite everything, mentalities are starting to evolve, and practices such as borrowing, donating, or renting objects are emerging and gaining media attention. “Sustainable consumption also means sharing,” explains Valérie Guillard. “It is local, within a given area. Once again, it does not yet correspond to our consumption norms, even though initiatives exist.”

This is the case for coworking spaces and “repair cafés,” these new collaborative repair workshops that are spreading throughout the country with the support of associations, local authorities, and the state. The Recyclerie, a coworking space located in the Eighteenth Arrondissement of Paris, for example, has hosted L'Atelier de René (“Rene’s Workshop”) since 2014, in partnership with Veolia. The objective of this place is to fight against planned obsolescence by repairing everyday objects, lending tools, and sharing knowledge. After five years of existence, L'Atelier de René has repaired over three thousand small household appliances. These solutions are also being developed in waste sorting centers or energy recovery units, such as in Bordeaux. In Floirac, more specifically, Veolia launched a new kind of waste disposal facility, Recycl'Inn, in 2014, which includes an area for recovering used household items that might have a second life, as well as a specific reception area for used furniture. This is a way to connect with the local community and invest in these sites as integrated living spaces in the urban landscape.

“So here we are at the heart of tomorrow's challenge: prevention and reuse,” notes Franck Pilard. “But to do this, we cannot collect as we used to; we need to do better with less. We talk about capture rather than collection. If I want to reuse an object, I need to preserve its physical integrity. Historically, we were paid by the ton and not for prevention: we take bins, empty them, remove the waste, and compact it towards the sorting center. But if I compact it, I cannot move towards repair, reuse, or recycling.” So how do we proceed? Change the methods of collecting household waste, for example: managing it by bicycle, by boat, or even on horseback. Reduce the frequency of truck visits, which sometimes occurs five days a week in certain cities, while others—certain neighborhoods in Rennes or Nantes—only have weekly collections. “We can also reduce the size of the bin,” adds Franck Pilard, “but we must be careful to remain socially equitable; we must do it according to the types of families. We must move towards a closer relationship with the citizens, because they hold the waste. If we want them to reuse, we have to work with them and understand their behaviors.”

Modern recycling, as we understand it today, gradually emerged in the twentieth century, particularly in the second half of the century. In Great Britain, the verb “to recycle” has been in use since 1926, and the term “recycling” appears shortly after World War II. In France, the term recyclage first appeared in 1960—but it wasn't until the 1970s that these words became commonly used in everyday language, coinciding with the explosion of waste production. In 1970, graphic designer Gary Anderson created the iconic universal recycling logo based on the Möbius strip—which has only one surface and one edge—as part of a competition launched during the first Earth Day celebrated in Wisconsin. Originally intended for recycled paper products, the symbol later became widespread, used for all recycled or recyclable products worldwide. If the symbol is unaccompanied by any additional information, it indicates that the product is simply recyclable, while the appearance of a percentage signifies the proportion of recycled materials present. Its graphic simplicity is key to its success, allowing it to be adapted to all contexts and countries, to the extent that Gary Anderson realized the importance of his design when he spotted it on a trash can in Amsterdam a few years later!

The first to recycle material from waste after 1945 were the cardboard manufacturers, papermakers, and glassmakers, who were heirs to the old ragpickers. At that time, the Soulier Company, which would later become part of CGEA and Veolia, abandoned its declining ragpicking activities to focus on paper recycling by partnering with Cartonneries La Rochette. To supply its factories, the Soulier Company collected paper from shopping centers, supermarkets, and even schools after raising awareness of its collection among schoolchildren. After the 1973 oil crisis, glassmakers encouraged the French to recycle their glass bottles, as recycled glass required less energy. This was the first time such a recycling system was established for household waste. In 1976, an agreement was signed between the glass industry—represented by the Chambre syndicale des verreries mécaniques de France—and the Ministry of Industry and Research.

However, these initiatives still occupied a relatively small place compared to the explosion of what a 1972 television report called “lost packaging,”¹, i.e., non-returnable packaging. This accounted for 5 percent of packaging in 1960, 30 percent in 1972, and the journalist mentioned projections of 80 percent by 1980. From 220 kilograms of waste per year per person in the 1960s, France rose to 360 kilograms in 1990. Faced with this trend, recycling efforts remained localized for a long time. It was only in the 1980s that things began to scale up in a very pragmatic way. “We were then able to establish supply chains,” noted Martial Gabillard, Director of Resource Recovery at Veolia. “We identified sources, such as recycling wood, plaster, and even plastic. Our Waste Management division increasingly focused on sorting. If we saw that there was wood in the region, we would have a container for it. In recycling centers, we set up bins for green waste and, if necessary, for cardboard and scrap metal, which were used by cardboard manufacturers and scrap dealers. But it wasn't until the 1992 law that these flows were orchestrated.”
Reflecting the spirit of the times and the simultaneous undertaking of other countries, the French Royal Law revamped the country's policy on household waste management. In addition to encouraging a reduction in landfilling and energy production from incineration, it advocated for waste reduction and valorization, driving the development of new facilities such as sorting centers and recycling centers. Like Germany from 1989 onwards, it further expanded the producer's responsibility, defined by the “polluter-pays” principle in the 1975 European directive, to household waste. It also fostered the creation of eco-organizations—federations of producers who assumed responsibility for the end-of-life management of their products.

 “In the 1990s, local authorities no longer had the financial and technical means to manage waste, which was becoming more complex,” explains Helen Micheaux, Associate Professor of Management Sciences at AgroParisTech. “Another solution had to be found. It was in this context that the idea of producer responsibility emerged.” “There was a real awareness. All these waste materials that we handled could be recycled. To achieve this, they had to be removed from household bins, implementing specific recycling channels for sorting and preparing them for reintegration,” says Françoise Weber, Director of Extended Producer Responsibility Schemes in France at Veolia. “With eco-organizations, we started sorting plastic, cardboard, paper, and glass packaging.” In the early 1990s, it was time to accelerate recycling efforts. 

Gradually, the importance of managing the environmental impacts of this new material is emerging. It is in Germany and the Scandinavian countries that selective sorting has been most quickly embraced by the population in order to achieve this. Marc-Olivier Houel, General Manager of Recycling and Waste Valorization in France, as well as former Industrial Waste and Household Waste Manager in Sarre, remembers a time when everything had to be invented: “The Germans were pioneers in eco-packaging and the creation of eco-organizations,” he says. “In September 1990, they established the first eco-organization in Europe—the Dual System Deutschland (DSD)—and the Green Dot (Der Grüne Punkt)—the circular logo representing two intertwined arrows indicating that the company contributes to the treatment of packaging, which was later adopted by many countries, including France.

Veolia, which has just entered the German market through the acquisition of the cross-border company Kléber, will play a central support role by advising cities on the implementation of the new regulations, distributing new transparent yellow bags, raising awareness among citizens through collection operators, and recruiting specific sorting ambassadors.” Gradually, waste such as bottles, plastic films, yogurt pots, Tetra Pak packaging, and aluminum cans are collected and given back to the DSD: in the Saarland region, the quantities of lightweight household packaging collected and sorted have increased from zero in 1992, when the first selective collection system was implemented, to thirty kilograms per capita per year in 1995.

However, in Germany itself, sorting alone did not immediately lead to recycling. The created plastic streams did not immediately find outlets that had not previously existed; instead, they led to the creation of these outlets, starting from the late 1990s. “It was like a startup,” recalls Marc-Olivier Houel. “We were transforming our environment, and that of our clients, by putting pressure on the reuse of materials.” The creation of a material resource allowed for the establishment of dedicated plastic recycling channels for horticultural pots or the automotive industry five to six years later. In 1998, Mercedes signed a framework agreement for collection from car dealerships and the recycling of damaged car parts (bumpers, glass, batteries, wipers, etc.). “We found recycling channels with Mercedes throughout Europe,” recalls Marc-Olivier Houel. “The system was almost a closed loop. This is how we played a leading role in promoting the circular economy in Germany and Europe.”

To expand these channels, partnerships with large companies are essential for exploring possibilities and finding new outlets for recycled plastic, which historically had been used mainly for non-technical applications such as recycled PVC pipes. This entails both “assisting industrial companies in changing their approach to raw materials, accepting small defects in recycled plastics,” explains Martial Gabillard, “and adapting to the most complex demands of companies that want to maintain high-quality products with specific technical specifications”. Over the past twenty years, progress has been significant, to the point where, in 2021, the technological leader Thales partnered with Veolia to create the first eco-designed SIM card made from recycled plastic that meets the necessary requirements for strength, flexibility, and heat resistance.

In general, "there is a great deal of partnership work with eco-organizations. We need to work together to secure long-term material resources for innovative recycling industries," says Françoise Weber and Sophie Petibon, Commercial Director of Recycling and Waste Valorization at Veolia. This partnership also extends to eco-design in order to close the loops. Veolia encourages its partners to manufacture monoplastic products that are pure and simple, requiring fewer chemicals and less energy for recycling. “We offer consulting services on eco-design to industrial companies, as well as certification of the level of recyclability of their packaging," explains Sven Saura, Director of the Recycling and Plastics division at Veolia. "It should be noted that using a bottle made from recycled plastic emits 75 percent less CO2 than one made from virgin plastic, and eco-design can further reduce this.”

Simplifying and standardizing the plastics used, especially those derived from recycling, is key to promoting the development of a circular economy. This is why Veolia formalized its brand of circular polymers, PlastiLoop, in 2022. With PlastiLoop, the group offers a range of recycled products structured to meet the needs of various industries that want to reduce their use of virgin plastic. It is an offer tailored to the specific needs of each industry, from automotive to agri-food, aiming to establish recycling as a shared standard.

However, the challenge of plastic use and recycling is far from being solved. The world consumes over 350 million tons of plastic each year, and according to the United Nations Environment Programme, if nothing is done, this consumption figure could triple by 2060 and exceed one billion tons.⁴ Currently, only 9 percent of plastic is recycled worldwide, almost 50 percent is landfilled, 19 percent is incinerated, and the rest ends up polluting the environment, sometimes in the form of micro- or nanoplastics. As an article in Le Monde published in 2023 states, “Every minute, the equivalent of a garbage truck filled with plastic waste is dumped into the oceans"⁵. While technical solutions are being developed, regulations still have a role to play, as is often seen in the interaction between technology and the law. Mandatory incorporation of recycled plastic in products, such as the European Union's requirement for bottlers to incorporate at least 25 percent of recycled plastic into their bottles by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030, will be crucial.

The Development of Higher Value-Added Valorization

In contrast to the indiscriminate massing of waste streams, it is their increasingly minute separation that enriches the value of recycled organic matter. Veolia, in partnership with Angibaud and Recyfish, markets fertilizers made from fish waste. Primarily used in high-value crops such as viticulture and market gardening, the resulting “fish guano” is an organic fertilizer rich in nitrogen and phosphorus that also affects the microfauna and microflora of the soil, crucial for the optimal exchange of elements between the soil and the plant.

Moving upmarket also requires mastery of new techniques. “Since its creation in 1979, Sede has acquired more expertise in sludge, drying, composting, and anaerobic digestion, enabling us to offer a more diverse range of biowaste valorization pathways today,” explains Morgane Maurin, Secretary-General of Sede. “What we spread in the fields is a very diverse range, including high-quality compost and premium fertilizers such as Pro-Grow, Vital, and ADS.” On Veolia's composting sites, as Guillaume Wallaert, former Director of Biowaste Solutions at Veolia, points out, “the AEROcontrol system, for example, accelerates the degradation of residues by using a probe to measure parameters such as compost temperature to optimize air injection, improve the maturation process, and obtain higher-quality compost.”

To better support farmers, Veolia has also pioneered innovations in precision agriculture. During spreading, it is also possible to observe how plants consume fertilizer and what their needs are, in order to optimize its use. “We apply biostimulants to the plant so that it can use the fertilizer to its maximum potential, allowing it to develop optimally and resist its environment,” says Maelenn Poitrenaud. The same goes for soils: the Soil Advisor application helps farmers optimize fertilization by using organic fertilizers such as compost.

Veolia now even goes so far as to be a shareholder of Mutatec, a startup that transforms organic waste into proteins for animal nutrition through the breeding of black soldier flies, which produce insect protein concentrates from the waste material. “Bioconversion is a future activity that addresses the global food challenge and the objective of a circular economy by providing a better path for the valorization of organic by-products,” emphasizes Jean-Christophe Perot, regional director for the Southeast region at Sede.

Based on the experience of the Compagnie Générale des Eaux in water treatment and its culture of engineers from prestigious government bodies, SARPI (SARP Industries) experimented, innovated, and sometimes faced failure. It should be noted that at that time, knowledge in this field was not well-developed. “Before 1975, hazardous waste, particularly from industrial and chemical activities, was not specially treated; it ended up in landfills or was diluted in watercourses,” recalls Cédric L'Elchat, CEO of SARP Industries. Initially, SARPI attempted to incinerate hazardous waste in a furnace, but this was a resounding failure: the furnace was damaged by corrosion caused by acids released during the combustion of toxic wastes such as sulfur and solvents, which are now prohibited chemicals. However, SARPI retained the trust of the group, which provided it with the most valuable resource for developing such a complex activity: time.

After approximately ten years, the subsidiary managed to treat the waste by continuously raising the bar of expertise, testing, and learning to characterize hazardous waste. “There is no client who accurately describes their waste,” notes Jean-François Nogrette. “Some know exactly where it comes from, but for others, it is the result of mixtures. We have to perform chemical analysis in the laboratory to characterize the waste and prevent dangerous combinations. Thus, we have developed a genuine culture of waste chemistry, which later motivated us to move toward recycling it, as it is this intimate knowledge of the waste that drives us to extract more value from it.”

As a result of this progress, in 2022, Veolia not only treats but also valorizes hazardous waste, generating over one billion euros in revenue in France and over four billion euros worldwide. While SARPI initially treated waste from large industrial companies, it is now active in various sectors, including “chemistry, petrochemistry, pharmaceuticals, vaccine manufacturers, and healthcare waste,” as specified by Cédric L'Elchat. The automotive industry represents a significant branch of hazardous waste, particularly with the proliferation of lithium batteries to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles. The challenge in this area lies in their recycling, as end-of-life batteries contain valuable materials such as various plastics, solvents, electronic components, and even high-value metals like lithium, cobalt, copper, manganese, or nickel.

SARPI will leverage the expertise of its site in Dieuze, Moselle, to recover these materials, supported by European regulations that will require the inclusion of recycled raw materials in the production of new batteries. By 2031, batteries will need to contain 16 percent recycled cobalt and 6 percent recycled lithium and nickel, with these percentages increasing over the years.

Finally, while SARPI initially focused on water protection, it also addresses soil decontamination, investing in the remediation of industrial sites that are either at the end of their life or abandoned. “We deploy technologies to treat industrial brownfields,” explains Cédric L'Elchat. “We treat the hazards that can affect groundwater and surface waters, which may become contaminated by heavy metals such as lead or arsenic or by organic compounds such as hydrocarbons or methane.” Advanced technical solutions exist, including stabilization to reduce the mobility of pollutants in the soil, solidification to make the soil impermeable and trap pollutants, and thermal desorption to heat the soil and volatilize toxic components. For example, the latter method was used by Veolia to remediate the Fiat industrial site in Kragujevac, Serbia. Physico-chemical and biological treatments are also used, along with phytoremediation, which offers a more economical and ecological approach to soil decontamination. This technique is currently being used experimentally to treat contaminated soils around the Fukushima power plant in Japan.

Ultimately, whether it is paper, glass, plastic, organic matter, or hazardous waste, when we consider these materials, we are confronted with the finiteness of our resources. Waste treatment prevents pollution of the remaining natural resources, while recycling helps reduce extraction. It is essential and even virtuous in this sense, and there is still room for improvement. “In the Rennes metropolitan region, for example,” adds Martial Gabillard, “you are no longer allowed to bring grass clippings to waste disposal facilities; instead, composting is mandatory. We need to make these kinds of societal choices.” However, more fundamentally, since we cannot escape natural limits, we must remain aware and continue to steer mindsets toward greater resource efficiency.

In the nineteenth century, if the concept of “circular economy” did not exist, it is simply because it had always been in practice, implicitly, without needing to be defined. The few products that society considered useless and disposable often ended up in the soil or water, but they were assimilable, as they were few in number and mostly organic. A profound rupture occurred during the twentieth century, driven in particular by the chemical and petrochemical industries that fueled consumer society. As society urbanized, waste became “bulky,” to use a term still used today for some of them. Influenced by hygiene, there was a need to treat waste first as a flow, meaning transporting it out of cities by horse-drawn carriages and later trucks, as well as utilizing the kinetic force of water through sewage systems. In his book, Le Propre et le Sale, Georges Vigarello draws a parallel between these two depreciated professions: the “dawn workers” who collected garbage and the “water workers” who operated in the sewers. It was a shadowy job that made this waste invisible. Waste was then stored in landfills, increasingly farther away as rapid urbanization brought people closer to their own piles of garbage. No one wanted to live near these cesspools, amidst the foul odors. The twentieth century marked the culmination of the long process of the “olfactory silence” of cities, as beautifully named by Alain Corbin in his seminal work on smell and social imagination, Le Miasme et la Jonquille.

From this visceral need for cleanliness, a profession was born: waste collection and transportation, which revived the same debate as water services in the late nineteenth century, regarding the choice between municipal management and public service delegation. Unlike water distribution services, which saw the creation of two private giants, the Compagnie Générale des Eaux (CGE, now Veolia) and the Lyonnaise des Eaux (now Suez), waste management and garbage collection services were in the main run by small local and artisanal companies initially, as they required fewer resources. Even during the First World War, these small companies’ organization was not questioned, despite facing a series of difficulties (staff shortages, horse requisitions, a downturn in sludge sales, expensive goods, etc.), and the city of Nantes, for example, continued its contract with the Grandjouan company, which later became a subsidiary of CGE. “Individual initiative is always better equipped to find remedies than a public administration,” claimed the municipal council in 1915. The gradual mechanization of these jobs in the 1920s, with the first garbage trucks, and later, after the Second World War, with the widespread use of compacting garbage bins, complicated the lives of all kinds of waste collectors. However, it was the explosion of consumption that made the old waste recovery system impossible.

As early as the interwar period, certain American companies theorized the concept of “planned obsolescence” to stimulate growth. Faced with declining sales, lightbulb manufacturers agreed to limit the lifespan of their products to encourage consumers to replace them more frequently. Another famous example is DuPont de Nemours, which deliberately reduced the lifespan of stockings and tights sold by the company. The increase in waste was such that historians John R. McNeill and Peter Engelke refer to it as the “great acceleration” in their book of the same name, starting from the mid-twentieth century. The challenges required larger-scale solutions to waste collection and treatment solutions, leading to the concentration of local companies within larger groups. This is the story of the CGEA (Compagnie Générale des Entreprises Automobiles), which integrated a series of local subsidiaries, such as Grandjouan for collection and transportation, USP (Union des Services Publics) for incineration plants, SEMAT (Société d'Équipement Manutention et Transports) for providing waste bins and vehicles, and Soulier, acquired from Cartonneries La Rochette, for cardboard and paper recovery.

For local authorities, these companies managed one of the least noble activities: dealing with the heaps of waste produced by society. This is a little-told story, as it is about the invisibility of our waste via its burial or incineration, a necessary condition for the immaculate cleanliness of our cities and villages. But economic and ecological logic has now come to question this new order of things.

In France, Laurence Rocher, a lecturer in planning and urbanism, points out that “the organization of waste collection and treatment was characterized by the absence of a dedicated national policy. The regulatory framework was produced by different ministries according to the sectors producing waste.” The Ministry of Equipment was responsible for waste from public works and urban planning, the Ministry of Agriculture for agricultural waste, the Ministry of Industry for waste from manufacturing activities, and so on.

The creation of a Ministry of the Environment in 1971, whose initial objective was to combat noise pollution, allowed for the structuring of the waste sector. Thus, on July 15, 1975, the first major law on waste management was enacted, contemporaneous with similar laws in Germany and the United States, and served as the basis for national environmental regulations. It stipulated that local authorities now had the responsibility for the collection and disposal of household waste from their constituents in approved locations. The waste producer also became responsible for their waste. This was a turning point. “When the law took effect, industrial companies asked us to dispose of their waste while demanding guarantees that the waste would be treated in accordance with regulations,” recalls Alexander Mallinson, regional director at Veolia, who was responsible for waste recycling and recovery activities. It was thanks to these regulatory measures that local authorities increasingly turned to private service providers like CGEA (Veolia's future subsidiary) through public service delegations. As environmental protection rules multiplied, waste treatment facilities became more technical, and the use of CGEA became the norm.

Incineration: The First Alternative to Landfill

Originally, the two basic waste treatment methods were landfilling and incineration. Both processes have contributed to the cleanliness of cities since the late nineteenth century. At that time, landfills were more often located in rural areas, while incinerators were found in urban areas. This distribution was driven by cross-cutting imperatives of public health (waste placed in landfills could attract bugs and larger animals and pollute water) and performance (incinerators being more efficient in reducing the significant volume of urban waste). Additionally, the geographical constraints played a role, as vast and sparsely populated rural areas could more easily accommodate landfill sites, while cities required facilities with a smaller footprint.

The English were the first to develop incineration solutions in 1865, installing a modest furnace in Gibraltar to burn waste from the British army. In 1870, the first municipal incinerator was established in Paddington, a London district. At that time, these “destructors,” as they were called across the Channel, did not function well and did not burn all the waste, causing black smoke in the surrounding areas. However, newer generations of incinerators increased the efficiency of combustion and allowed for the utilization of energy for heating or electricity. According to Gérard Bertolini, a CNRS research director, “in 1906, 140 to 180 (over 150, according to other sources) English cities primarily used incineration to treat waste, and over half of them recovered the energy produced, including 45 to 65 cities linked to power plants.”

In France, it was not until 1905 that the first incinerators were established in four waste treatment plants: in Saint-Ouen, Issy-les-Moulineaux, Romainville, and later in Ivry (in 1912). In 1927, SEPIA (Société d'Entreprises pour l'Industrie et l'Agriculture) built a modern incineration plant in Tours, capable of producing electricity and bricks from the recovered bottom ash after combustion. It was even decided at the time that waste collection would be carried out by electric trucks that could recharge directly at the plant. In the 1930s, under the influence of the hygiene movement, incineration gained significant popularity, as fire was believed to purify everything. The Union des Services Publics, a future subsidiary of the CGEA group and Compagnie Générale des Eaux, developed incinerators in Bordeaux (1932), Rouen (1933), Nancy (1933), Marseille (1935), Roubaix (1936), Monaco (1937), and Bourges (1938).

By 1939, over twenty French cities had adopted incineration. In contrast, both England and the United States gradually shifted away from incineration and towards sanitary landfilling, as certain waste did not burn well and residents began to complain about the proximity of incinerators due to the foul odors. In France, incineration continued to coexist alongside landfills after World War II: the Nanterre plant incinerated waste from seven municipalities in the western suburbs, and the city of Lyon supplied its incinerators with waste from neighboring municipalities.

Incineration experienced a renewed interest in the 1990s. The 1992 law provided for the limitation of landfilling as a waste disposal method. Its importance grew even further in 1994, when the law prohibited incineration if it did not allow for energy recovery. The objective was to valorize both the materials and the energy content of waste, which could produce heat or electricity. This led to the systematic deployment of old but previously outdated processes due to the emergence of other, cheaper energy sources, as well as the implementation of policies that encouraged industrial efficiency on their facilities. Although the 1992 law favored waste incineration over landfilling, the development of energy recovery systems progressed slowly.

Were waste and garbage invented? This is the thesis brilliantly defended by urban planning researcher and teacher Sabine Barles in her book, The Invention of Urban Waste: France, 1790–1970.¹ The author refers to “urban” waste, and the adjective is crucial. The meaning of “waste” depends on how it is understood, as definitions of this term, as well as other words used throughout history to describe the byproducts of human activity (such as sludge, refuse, filth, residues, and sewage) have reflected different visions, eras, and ways of life. According to Christian Duquennoi, an engineer at the École des Ponts and researcher at Irstea (National Research Institute of Science and Technology for the Environment and Agriculture), the concept of waste refers to “matter that no longer has utility or function, but it does not exist in absolute terms.”

In his book, Waste: From the Big Bang to the Present Day,² he traces the origin of this concept back hundreds of millions of years after the Big Bang and the creation of the universe when planetary systems formed and expelled “waste,” which consisted of matter and energy that were not useful for the functioning of these stars. Within Earth's ecosystems, the undesirable products expelled by living organisms are not lost to everyone. The waste from some organisms becomes food for others, as exemplified by the carbon dioxide we exhale, which promotes plant growth through photosynthesis.

“This is the beginning of the circular economy!” notes Christian Duquennoi mischievously. In a more prosaic sense, the French word “déchet” comes from “déchoir,” which describes what falls to the ground during human activity: wood chips produced from tree trimming, pieces of fabric that fall after use, excrement returning to the earth, etc. Waste serves as the raw material for archaeologists, who work with what was considered useless by preliterate societies. However, for most of human history, most byproducts were reused. It was only in the twentieth century that Antoine Compagnon, a member of the Académie française and author of The Ragpickers of Paris, identified this period as a “parenthesis” in history—a time of disposability and widespread waste. It was during this period that solutions had to be found to transport and manage the countless amounts of waste now being produced.

If ragpickers were able to make a living from their work, it is because the demand for rags had exploded across Europe to the extent that their exportation was prohibited in France from 1771 onwards. Rags were used to make paper, which saw increasing use throughout the eighteenth century. The rise of the press, the printing boom, and the democratization of education led to a significant increase in paper production, from 18,000 tons in 1812 to 350,000 tons in 1900. It required 1.5 kilograms of rags to produce 1 kilogram of paper, making up half of the manufacturing cost. There was even a rag market with prices varying depending on quality, often unrelated to the original material's price, whether it be cotton, hemp, or linen. (Wool rags were not used for paper production but rather for making new clothing.) Ragpickers sorted everything they collected, including bones (they were called “rag and bone men” in England), which would be turned into buttons or phosphorus for matches. They would then sell their cargo to wholesalers, known as “master ragpickers,” most of whom were located on the Rue Mouffetard in Paris. These ragpickers served as agents of order, possessing knowledge about the neighborhood through their work and providing information to the police. They had a mysterious presence, wandering the streets at night with hooks and sacks full of rags, sometimes intoxicated and always dirty. Ragpickers were registered at the prefecture of police and awarded “chiffon medals,” although there were many undocumented clandestine ragpickers. Their numbers dramatically increased during the nineteenth century, reaching 200,000 in the Seine department in 1884, according to the Chamber of the Ragpickers' Syndicate!

The vidangeur was the counterpart of the ragpicker, responsible for another significant recovery activity of the time: the collection of vidanges, or excrement dumped into cesspits and later moved to open-air dumps. With a 40 percent population growth throughout the eighteenth century, France became a demographic giant. Agricultural areas expanded, leading to a veritable “hunt for fertilizers,” as noted by Sabine Barles. The demand was so high that farmers and entrepreneurs were willing to pay for the right to transport urban excrement to rural areas. This was exemplified by Bridet, a Norman farmer who, in 1787, purchased the right to exploit the famous Montfaucon dumpsite in Paris⁶, now the location of Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. He patented a process to transform the fecal matter into dried poudrette, serving as natural fertilizer for farmers. New patents emerged throughout the nineteenth century, resulting in numerous poudrette factories that supplied suburban cities and rural villages until the twentieth century. However, criticism grew regarding the quality of this human-origin fertilizer.

To these sources of fertilizer, one must also add “urban sludge,” which consisted of household waste dumped in the streets mixed with sand, soil, and various other materials (including horse excrement, with Paris having eighty thousand horses in 1900). At one point, urban sludge was directly collected by servants sent by farmers, who provided them with horses, carts, and tools; it then became a competitive market among resellers. For large cities like Paris, the interest in sludge valorization was also driven by hygiene concerns, as those who wanted to sell it had to clean it from the streets.

The first collection and cleaning companies: Transportation in the service of cleanliness

Initially, street cleaning and sludge removal were entrusted to multiple small family-owned companies. Unlike water services, waste management did not initially require significant capital or technical, commercial, or contractual expertise of the sort which led to the emergence of a Compagnie générale des eaux (CGE). These companies partially earned their income by selling valuable waste. However, as the cost of cleaning increased due to urban growth and the value of sludge and rags decreased, these companies had to regularly renegotiate their contracts with the cities. Some obtained long-lasting concessions, constantly renewed, and grew accordingly, such as the Grandjouan company in Nantes, which cleaned the city's streets and transported waste from 1867 to 1947. Founded by François Grandjouan and his family, the company had fifty carts, eighty horses, sixty drivers, and one hundred sweepers to carry out its tasks.

In Nantes, as well as in Paris and Lyon, the authorities wanted to encourage residents to participate in keeping the city clean by introducing a “cleaning bucket” designed to collect garbage, which became known as the sarradine, named after Émile Sarradin, a perfumer who proposed the creation of a municipal sweeping tax. This was in 1878, and the Grandjouan company faced an enormous workload: removing mud, garbage, excrement, dust, ashes, broken glass, weeds, tree leaves, and scattered stones from the streets, as well as sweeping squares, quays, stairs, promenades, and doing daily cleaning of market halls. They even captured stray dogs. Tombeliers (cart drivers), ragpickers, and sweepers worked in terrible hygiene conditions, using shovels, rakes, and picks to collect and deposit waste into the carts. The buckets had to be carried up on ladders and then emptied, a particularly exhausting task.

The need to improve these conditions led these small, local waste collection and storage businesses to turn to the mechanization of transportation and the improvement of bins and carts. To achieve this, they sometimes joined forces with other companies that ventured into automobile manufacturing. However, the transition from horse-drawn carts to automobiles was very slow. Although the first front-wheel-drive and front-wheel-steering carts were developed by the brilliant inventor Georges Latil as early as 1897, it was not until the 1920s that horses were truly replaced by automobiles, especially for hygiene reasons, as animal excrement was now considered a nuisance. Georges Latil eventually found an inspired buyer for his innovative front-wheel drive in a young graduate of the École Polytechnique, Charles Blum. Blum saw the automobile as the industry of the future and invested the significant sum of 1,200,000 francs in the company.

In 1912, the two men founded the General Automobile Enterprise Company (CGEA). The First World War quickly confirmed the performance of Latil tractors, which contributed to the national mobilization, functioning on rough terrain with four-wheel steering and drive. After the war, CGEA provided traction vehicles to many municipalities that wanted to use them for street cleaning, particularly in certain neighborhoods of Paris. To expand the company, Charles Blum chose to acquire small transport companies in provincial areas, such as Maison Robert Vallée in Caen and Maison Jean et Beuchère in Rennes, which enabled CGEA to obtain contracts for household waste collection in these cities in 1930 and 1934. Although the Grandjouan family in Nantes resisted abandoning their horses for a long time, they eventually succumbed to the gradual relocation of landfills and fertilizer delivery points, since horse-drawn carts could not travel more than eight kilometers. In contrast, tractors could venture up to twenty-five kilometers. Convinced, the Grandjouans added a transportation service to their street-cleaning business. 

The figure of the ragpicker, often a local presence, gradually gave way to that of the road worker or garbage collector, clinging to the back of their garbage truck. They began working very early in the morning and carrying the waste farther away, as people no longer wanted to live near garbage dumps. The issue with waste was no longer finding a new use for it, but burying or disposing of it in rivers via sewage systems. Those who managed the waste worked difficult jobs that were often the objects of disdain, but they allowed city dwellers to live in clean cities. Today, both companies, Grandjouan and CGEA, are part of Veolia's history. “For decades, local authorities ‘made do’ with solutions for waste collection and disposal,” explains Franck Pilard, Veolia's Commercial Director for Local Authorities in Waste Recycling and Valorization. “Some municipalities had waste evacuated by a small local actor—the mayor's brother or a family farmer—sometimes until the 1960s. They were family businesses with a long history that were acquired by CGEA when they needed to scale up due to demographic, urbanization, and household consumption pressures.”

Thus, Veolia's waste collection and valorization activity has two origins. One is through organic, biological development, “which grows gradually,” to use the words of Paul-Louis Girardot, former CEO and administrator of the group. As early as the 1960s, CGE developed waste collection activities, such as in Saint-Omer, where the municipality realized that “it was not working well” and that those responsible for waste collection were “not very reliable” and needed help. The other origin is through acquisitions. In 1980, CGEA was fully integrated into the Compagnie Générale des Eaux, which was already a shareholder of the company, to consolidate a coherent range of service offerings: water, sanitation, waste, and Cleanliness. In addressing both municipalities and industrial clients, Veolia acquired companies such as Ipodec, “whose original name, ‘Ordures usines’ or ‘Factory Refuse,’ left no doubt about its core business!” recalls Didier Courboillet, Deputy CEO of Veolia's Waste Recycling and Valorization activity. This activity was briefly known as Onyx until the creation of the Veolia brand.

Since John Snow's studies in London in 1854, which revealed that cholera could be transmitted through water from a contaminated fountain, and the subsequent development of water and sanitation infrastructure, people have had a symbolically linear relationship with water: on one side, we obtain clean water, and on the other side, we dispose of our impure waste.

After centuries of separating these flows, the recycling of wastewater touches upon a strong cultural issue: it aims to bring them back together in a closed loop. It invites us to abandon the fiction that dirty water simply disappears, which was possible until now because we regarded the natural environment where it was discharged as indifferent and external to ourselves as humans. Instead, wastewater recycling fully embraces the water cycle, going beyond the initial wastewater treatment processes that aim to preserve bodies of water, at a time when we are becoming aware that humans are interconnected with nature. The recycling of water reflects the cultural changes that the era of ecology invites us all to embrace.

To respond to this new cultural moment, the necessary technology is available. These innovations, known as treated wastewater reuse (TWR), have been proven effective for over forty years in countries where water scarcity is most severe. Now, as freshwater resources become increasingly scarce, their usefulness is becoming more evident. The challenge lies in their widespread deployment to meet the water needs of both humans and nature.

The technology for wastewater treatment is mature, and the treatment processes are effective. Once the water is collected at the wastewater treatment plant, it goes through several stages. Firstly, the water undergoes preliminary treatment, which removes solid waste through screening, sedimentation, and rapid filtration. Then, primary treatment is carried out to remove suspended matter through sedimentation and flocculation. The secondary treatment involves biological purification, which eliminates pollutants, biodegradable organic matter, and pathogenic microorganisms. Finally, tertiary treatment is applied to remove undesirable substances, especially for urban use. Various methods are employed, such as membrane or media filtration, chemical treatments (chlorine, bleach), or ultraviolet irradiation. The level of treatment can be adapted to the quality of the incoming water and the specific needs of the customers—depending on whether the recycled water is destined for irrigation, industry, or drinking—to ensure the best sanitary quality at the lowest environmental cost.

Citizens appear ready to accept this new relationship with water. Although it challenges established practices and the age-old distinction between the pure and the impure, it aligns with the new expectations of circularity and waste reduction, especially as the impacts of climate change make it increasingly necessary. Some statistics support this notion: 69 percent of people worldwide are willing to consume food produced with recycled water, and 66 percent are willing to use recycled water for personal hygiene.¹

Regulations, however, still hinder the widespread adoption of water reuse, as they have been slow to reflect changing mindsets and adapt to evolving needs. This is particularly evident in agricultural use. In 2020, the European Union published regulations to govern and secure the use of treated wastewater for agricultural irrigation, defining four quality levels. “With level D, it is possible to irrigate short rotation coppices. Level C allows for drip irrigation, but the water cannot come into contact with the product, especially in vineyards. Quality level B permits agricultural and horticultural use if the water does not touch the products, and finally, quality level A allows for water to come into contact with the produce and be consumed raw, such as in salads,” explains Yvan Poussade. With water recycling and advances in health knowledge, the distinction between the pure and the impure becomes increasingly subtle.

Technologically, everything is in place to overcome this new frontier of water treatment in the coming years, particularly in coastal areas where it does not compete with downstream water resource uses. Moreover, it is more energy-efficient when compared to groundwater extraction and raw water treatment. This requires a strategic mixing of uses, considering agricultural, industrial, recreational, and urban safety purposes (including cleanliness, green spaces, or fire protection), as well as drinking water supply and environmental considerations (such as the recharge of groundwater or wetland preservation).

Given that these considerations must be made at the local level, it is essential to ensure that the supply and demand for recycled water are well-matched. On each project, it is necessary to avoid conflicts of use and identify consumers who will benefit from recycled water. This is the challenge that Ecofilae, founded by Nicolas Condom in 2009, partially addresses. As Condom emphasizes, “We need to reach out to users, whether farmers, industrialists, or golf course owners.” It is then necessary to assess their water needs in terms of quantity and quality. The goal is to determine if these needs can align with the capabilities of the treatment plant in order to build a water reuse loop. This correspondence between supply and demand has always been at the heart of Veolia's approach, as it was with the Compagnie Générale des Eaux in the early days.

In 2022, a new milestone was reached in France: the authorization in Vendée, a pioneering department in wastewater recycling, for a cutting-edge European experiment in indirect transformation into drinking water. The Jourdain program was named after two references: the Jordan River that flows along the border of Israel, an example to follow in water recycling, and the character of Mr. Jourdain in Molière's play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (1670), who speaks in prose without knowing it, just as we unknowingly reuse wastewater when we draw it downstream from the river into which it was discharged.

The project is led by the public water service of Vendée Eau—with the collaboration of Veolia, which designed and operates the refining unit of the program. It is financially supported by the Loire-Bretagne Water Agency, the Pays de la Loire region, the European Regional Development Fund (FEDER), the department, and the FNADT. Vendée Eau also works with a project management assistance team composed of CACG, Merlin Consulting, and Ecofilae. It is a collective territorial project. Instead of being discharged into the ocean, a portion of the water leaving the wastewater treatment plant in Les Sables d'Olonne is recovered and treated again at a refining station. This station treats pharmaceutical residues, micropollutants, and microbiological components such as viruses and bacteria. The resulting water is then transported twenty-seven kilometers to the Jaunay dam, where it will be reinjected into a vegetated area. “A battery of tests will be carried out on living organisms, fish, and shellfish found in the water. To analyze this biotope and measure the quality of the discharge, eight hundred components will be thoroughly examined,” explains Jacky Dallet, president of Vendée Eau and mayor of the municipality of Saint-André-Goule-d'Oie.

In the region of Saint-André-Goule-d'Oie, treated water will be mixed with the river water, which then flows to the drinking water production plant that will produce consumable water for households. The department of Vendée, particularly vulnerable to drought episodes, has the unique trait of drawing 94 percent of its drinking water from surface waters, whereas the national average is 30 percent. “A prospective consumption study for 2030–2035 highlights areas of vulnerability throughout the department and the coastal region. This could represent a deficit of eight million cubic meters of water,” Dallet says. The Jourdain project therefore represents an opportunity to preserve the natural resources and secure the drinking water reserves of the department. The stakes are significant: by 2027, the system could produce two million cubic meters of water annually.

Through the Jourdain program, Vendée Eau has a mission: to demonstrate the effects of an indirect reuse system of treated wastewater for drinking water. “The ultimate goal is to contribute to the evolution of regulations, to participate in improving the state of the art of water reuse, and to eventually enable the replication of similar solutions in France and Europe in territories sensitive to water resource pressure,” Dallet says.