SUEZ helps Montpellier improve waste recovery

Montpellier was already committed to waste recovery but, with SUEZ, its Amétyst anaerobic digestion treatment plant increased its energy production by 50% and reduced its proportion of landfilled waste. How? By treating a greater variety and quantity of waste and by developing the local organic waste recovery industry.
The mission

Help the city of Montpellier increase its quantity of reused waste

Montpellier supplies its 430,000 inhabitants with heat and electricity via Amétyst, its green energy production unit. The site, managed by SUEZ since 2008, treats household and similar waste by anaerobic digestion. It was already the largest plant of its kind in France, but the region wanted to accomplish even more, increasing its energy production and further reducing the quantity of its waste sent to landfills.
Our solution

Recover and reuse other types of waste, market and distribute them

To meet this objective, SUEZ based its solution on two priorities:

  • increase the initial household waste recovery capacity through investments;
  • create the necessary conditions for the development of a real organic waste recovery industry.

Thanks to its in-house expertise, SUEZ implemented complementary solutions for transforming different types of waste into new resources.

 

The results

The €10 million investment program has allowed for increasing the energy production of the Amétyst site by 50%, i.e., to 23,000 MWh of electricity and 12,000 MWh of heat expected to be generated in 2017. This more efficient energy reuse combined with the development of the new process for transforming biowaste into compost contributes to a significant reduction in landfilled waste. More than 51% of the area's waste is now being converted into new resources.

This level of performance in the anaerobic digestion of household waste and biowaste establishes the site as a benchmark in Europe.

173,000
tonnes
of household and similar waste transformed each year, including 40,000 tonnes of residual waste.
33,500
tonnes
of standardised compost produced per year.
Over 51
%
of waste from the area recycled into new resources.