Our 2017-2021 road map

By promoting diversity and well-being in the workplace SUEZ must mirror the companies and the places in which we operate. We’re committed to promoting equal opportunities by pursuing the Diversity Program initiated in 2012.

 

Diversity is an essential component of well-being of our company; it allows each employee to play a decisive role in the business transformation linked to the Resource Revolution through dedicated training courses. Employee well-being, needs to be measured: SUEZ is committed to pursuing its now homogeneous system of internal investigations and to implementing the necessary progress plans.

Increasing  safety of the men and women working for SUEZ remains imperative: this shouldn’t be taken for granted. Targets in this area are amongst the most ambitious in the industry, with the objective of zero fatal accidents in liability, regardless of the person's status.

 

Our ambition is  to reduce the frequency rates still further, in the water and waste sectors, wherever Suez is present amongst our employees as well as our subcontractors. Safety results are essential elements in assessing the performance of our managers.

The relationships that govern organizational and ecosystems are increasingly collaborative and transversal. As a producer of collective intelligence and innovation, SUEZ wishes to encourage this movement on three levels. First, at the employee level: we’re fostering new collaborative methods such as Skype, Yammer and Sharepoint to enable each of our employees to build systems of internal relationships from communities of interest; then, at the level of innovation to facilitate openness to the world of start-ups; and finally at the customer level to reinforce the principles of shared management, guaranteeing efficiency and performance for industrials and local authorities.

Our responsibility lies in an increasingly globalized world requiring both precautionary measures, such as the security of personal data of employees and customers, but also the promotion of our wholesome values and convictions.

 

Social rights are fundamental to human rights: wherever SUEZ is present, we commit all our subsidiaries to securing and strengthening mechanisms of social dialogue. With regards to our supply chain, we’re  implementing a vigilant plan to deliver respect for human rights and  taking steps to further promote CSR in our relations with our suppliers.

We subscribe to the two-degree trajectory by raising the ambitions of our previous roadmap.

We’re determined to limiting the carbon footprint of our business activities in all the countries where we operate with absolute GHG emission reduction targets: equipping all storage sites with biogas recovery systems, reinforcing the clean vehicle policy and increasing the energy performance of its business activities will contribute to reaching this goal.

 

We are also committed to helping our industrial customers and local authorities avoid the emission of GHGs through dedicated circular economy solutions (material and energy recovery), while doubling the recycling of plastic, a major economic and environmental issue for everyone.

By 2035, 40% of the world's population will live in water-stressed areas, if we do not act to secure water resources.

We want  to both save water through improved leak and consumption management, but also maximizing supply by increasing available volumes of alternative sources of water (wastewater reuse, desalination).

 

We offer solutions to industry aiming to limit the water footprint and work to raise awareness of the consequences of climate change on water, within the Business Alliance for Water and Climate. Prevention is as important as adaptation: so we’re developing predictive tools for flood risk prevention for communities of all sizes.

We have engaged all our employees in the Resource Revolution. Everything we do is a reflection of this strategy.

 

The circular economy  makes it possible to decouple growth from the consumption of natural resources while reducing GHG emissions. We’re s renewing our objective of increasing the proportion of waste transformed into a secondary raw material, and applying it worldwide.

The fight against climate change, as well as large-scale deployment of the circular economy, requires the creation of a new economic model that takes structural account of external environmental and social factors.

 

We are developing this model by adopting an internal carbon price; by systematizing the proposal for remuneration based on global performance; by working on indicators for the circularity of materials for a more robust measurement of the impacts of the new model; by promoting the revolution of thought through implementation of a circular economy.

The solutions proposed by us in terms of the circular economy and treatment of water resources reflect the expectations of our industrial customers and local communities regarding economic and environmental performance.

Using existing tools (notably environmental and social life cycle analysis), we will implement a homogeneous and comprehensive measurement system to ensure the contribution of the new solutions to the main challenges of sustainable development: water, biodiversity, climate change, health, citizens' expectations.

The digital revolution is helping  the resource revolution. The digitalization of our operations is underway, with 3 million sensors installed on the networks managed by the company and on household waste bins. But this must be improved, because it guarantees optimized management of water consumption and waste collection, and their overall performance, but also the development of predictive tools for the sustainable city. Tools like the  new Advanced Solutions Line. It also serves the quality of life and comfort of citizens and it enables the implementation of new interactive services and e-commerce platforms.

The métiers of SUEZ are, by definition, local métiers. As such, they meet the growing demand for decentralisation. This characteristic makes it possible to implement tailor-made solutions adapted to the specific challenges of territories, the size of local authorities, the constraints of farmers and the location of industrials. Whether it’s mobile water treatment units overcoming the challenge of access to water in some parts of the world, mobile desalination or sanitation units, SUEZ is committed to developing them.

For us, trust is an essential asset and dialogue is the surest means of nurturing and sustaining it. We’ve built robust tools for analyzing local issues and stakeholder mapping for a quality dialogue. SUEZ is committed to increasing its implementation at the heart of our processes, whether this involves accompanying strategic contracts or conducting annual reviews of the sustainable development policy and its outcomes, notably by sharing the dilemmas faced by the company. The results of a new reputation indicator and satisfaction surveys will play a role in this.

We believe that protecting the ocean is a top priority for the 21st century. It requires the reduction of land-based pollution essentially caused by plastics. The issues are as much behavioral as they are technological: we, at Suez, in partnership with NGOs, its employees and citizens, are working to avoid and reduce the amount of plastic discharged at sea and is standardizing our proposal of solutions for the treatment of micro-plastics in wastewater. Air quality is also an essential component of environmental health: so were committed to continuously maintaining discharges into the air below the limits set by local regulations.

Climate change has many implications for biodiversity, as it has an interdependent relationship with water resources and provides for multiple ecosystems. Biodiversity must be preserved and promoted, on land, on the coast and in the oceans. SUEZ aims to draw inspiration from the national strategy of biodiversity to which we already adheres to in France to propose strategic policies and action plans adapted for local, specific issues in those countries where we work.

Access to essential water and sanitation services remains a major challenge worldwide, both in developed and developing countries. SUEZ mobilizes a range of solutions to help improve this,, contributing to the achievement of SDG 6: supporting projects for access to essential services in countries with the greatest needs via the Fonds SUEZ Initiatives; sharing our expertise with water and sanitation officials in developing countries; promoting sustainable access to these services in the context of our contracts.

We contribute to the local development and attractiveness of the territories in which we operate and measure our socio-economic footprint. We intend to reinforce this by increasing the share of purchases made with SMEs, suppliers from the social economy, diversity, disability or integration depending on the particular issues of the territories in questions. The adequacy of water services and the recycling of waste in line with the expectations of territories and their inhabitants requires the development of partnerships with social and environmental entrepreneurs, whose numbers we wish to increase.

The commitments of the roadmap must be installed at the heart of the company's entire processes, our trademark in sustainable development: this is the SUEZ WAY. It is characterized by dedicated governance (annual reviews of the action plans linked to the objectives carried out by the CODIR; a commitment made by each member of the executive committee); a specific implementation procedure (a sustainable development contract signed with each business unit); a range of offers and solutions aligned with CSR expectations (design and deployment of the sustainable portfolio tool).