What improves waste management? - Veolia Environmental Services

O N T H E W A Y T O W A R D S A N E W I N D U S T R I A L W O R L D
What improves
waste management?
Landfill (p 18)
From uncontrolled
dumpsites to
environmental
sanitary landfills
Special report (p 35)
Singapore:
a whole-hearted
commitment to the
environment
History (p 40)
1853,
the year it all
began for the
VE Group
3

02
CONTENTS
04 REPORT What improves waste management?
12 COLLECTION From cart drivers and rag-pickers to computer-assisted pickup
18 LANDFILL From uncontrolled dumpsites to environmental sanitary landfills
22 INCINERATION From burning to energy production
26 OZONE Why a shield in the stratosphere is toxic on the ground ?
30 MULTINATIONALS How far is too far?
35 SPECIAL REPORT Singapore: a whole-hearted commitment to the environment
40 HISTORY 1853, the year it all began for the VE Group

EDITORIAL
T he
anniversary of the founding 150 years ago of the
Compagnie Générale des Eaux, Veolia Environnement’s
forerunner, is a perfect opportunity to take stock of the
waste management industry, to review its past and speculate
about its future.
Distilling into a few pages the technical innovations that have
shaped waste collection and treatment for over a century makes
you stop and think about the future.
The advances in waste management reflect changes in society
and attitudes—the attitudes of individuals, of manufacturers
and of authorities. They spotlight the way we organize cities, impact nature, look at pollution
and factor in human health—all issues of vital importance to contemporary societies as they
contemplate their future.
Looking back at the beginning of the industrial era in Western societies sheds light on the
problems mega-cities in emerging countries are currently facing. It also highlights points up the
fact that the strides made by developed (North) nations cannot be assimilated and achieved by
developing (South) countries overnight.
Looking back also helps us to grasp the enormity of the changes in our industries and society’s
gradual recognition of what we do. Rag-pickers, dustbin rakers and other trash collectors from the
fringes of society gave way to porters—whose jobs elevated them to the first rung on the social
ladder—and such highly skilled occupations as engineers, chemists, logistics experts and IT
specialists. In countries where waste collectors are still treated like pariahs, it is up to us to train
and restore the dignity of those who labor every day to keep our planet clean.
Finally, from a historical perspective, the pernicious accumulation of waste associated with
urbanization and higher living standards, amplified by changes in production methods and
consumption patterns and the creation of non-biodegradable and non-recyclable materials,
especially plastics, seems like a relatively recent phenomenon. It was not so long ago that our
rural areas were waste-free zones. “Salvage-recycle-return to the earth” practices were based
on the principle of “waste not, want not.” Eliminating waste is a key component of sustainable
development. Best environmental policies are a return to the age-old traditions of rural
economies: painstakingly sorting through trash in order to reuse what you can and return what
is left to the earth, as safely as possible. Manufacturers are going back to the past in halting the
production of environmentally harmful materials, such as PVC. Designing resource-economical
products and manufacturing processes represents a similar decision to reject the wastefulness
of consumer societies.
Environmental progress depends on more than just research programs and technological innovations.
It is also driven by behaviors that might be termed, if not regressive, at least recessive!
Denis Gasquet
Chief Executive Officer of Onyx
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WHAT IMPROVES WASTE
MANAGEMENT?
Humankind has buried, burned and recycled its waste—as feed for animals,
fertilizer for soil and objects and materials given a second life—since the
beginning of time. Though all three options are still widely used today,
technologies have created much more sophisticated methods of treatment.
Waste treatment has evolved in response to regulatory mandates, and the desire
of waste management professionals to move their industry forward.
What do an “above-ground” composting
plant and a manure pit have in
common? How about a rag-picker’s
hook and the gripping arm of a sideloading
garbage truck? An air-tight
storage facility that supplies a cement
plant with heat, households with electricity,
versus a “steaming mountain”
picked over by a horde of rag-clad
kids? Or a purified-discharge incinerator
that heats city homes through a
steam circuit or powers an electric
tramway, and the first incinerator in
Paddington, belching its black, toxic
fumes onto the town? How about the
recovery of metal diluted in an industrial
acid bath and the salvaging of
copper buttons from a rag pile?
Feeding chimney fires with baskets
and using cooking oil as fuel for
buses and boats? What they have in
common is that they are all methods
of treating waste. What distinguishes
them is technology. The technology
gap was created by techniques such
as bioreaction, leachate treatment,
biogas recovery, fluidized beds, fume
filtering, electrolysis, screening, compacting,
optical sorting, pyrolysis,
thermolysis, hydrogenation, etc.
Technologies have transformed waste
management into a real industry,
complete with sub-specialties—landfill,
incineration, composting, recycling—and
a range of specialists,
in collection, transfer, sorting,
urban and industrial cleaning,
soil remediation, industrial
hazardous waste and more.
Advances in these technologies
and their application
to waste treatment
mirror
general changes in lifestyles and
mentalities.
The city as a cesspool
Waste became an issue with the rise
in urban living. When people congregate
in built-up areas, at increasing
distances from the fields as the town
expands, the natural cycle of eliminating
one’s own waste via composting,
burial, burning or use as animal feed
is broken. From the Middle Ages until
the 19th century, for want of efficient
organization, European cities were
cesspools of garbage (see interview
with C. de Silguy). Whatever wasn’t
scavenged by farmers, rag-pickers
and the pigs that strolled through the
streets, or piled up on the outskirts of
town, accumulated and was gradually
worked into the soil. When towns
expanded, they incorporated the
mounds of trash left behind by previous
generations. Examples include
the Tel el-Hama in Syria, Holland’s
Kjoekkenmoe-dings, the Monte
Testaccio in Rome and the labyrinth of
the Jardin des plantes in Paris, among
others.
Sanitation and hygiene
awareness
It was not until people began to
understand the concepts of sanitation
and hygiene that public authorities
really began to organize waste elimination.
The work of Pasteur, who discovered
microbes, served as the Big
Bang. Pasteur established the link
between the pathogenic bacteria in
garbage, spread by insects and rats,
and epidemics. Formerly reluctant
Parisians who for several centuries
REPORT
had balked at regulations requiring
them to sweep in front of their
doors or dispose of their trash, and
just as fiercely opposed paying a collection
tax, suddenly mobilized to
protect their health and filed complaints
with the Public Health Council.
Taxes were levied and trash cans mandated—admittedly,
not without sparking
some protest. Trash collection
was organized and streamlined. City
fathers in major cities in Europe and
the United States developed a keen
interest in purifying waste by fire.
A cornucopia of trash
The rise of industrial civilization and
consumer society was another milestone
in the history of waste management,
the impact of which can be mea-
Transforming
waste into biofuel
in Israël
In Rishon LeThion, south of Tel Aviv,
Lipodan is recycling food grease
collected from restaurants and
used oil from gas stations, car
repair shops, bus companies, etc.
inside the Gush Dan region’s waste
treatment center. The plant treats
12,000 metric tons of organic oils
and 6,000 metric tons of mineral
oils a year, using the Lipoval process.
The oils are converted to
Lipofit, an energy-producing fat
concentrate that can replace fossil
fuels in boilers and industrial incinerators.
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sured by comparing
the per capita volume
of garbage produced
by Western nations to the
same figures for emerging countries.
Waste volumes are climbing
at an alarming rate, while packaging
just keep proliferating and frugality
is a lost art. As goods become
more abundant and living standards
rise, “People don’t repair things anymore,
they throw them out and buy
new ones.” The contents of trash cans
are also changing, as calorific values
soar and fertilizer potential declines.
Today’s garbage bins are filled with
non-rotting, hard-to-reuse plastics
and toxic waste, including batteries,
An industry in surch of its market
As surprising as it may seem, waste management companies have a less-than-perfect knowledge of their market!
There is currently no exact, exhaustive inventory of waste stores worldwide. For whatever reason—runaway uncontrolled
dumpsites, a lack of national statistical directories, non-standardized nomenclature, poor communication
in the industry and a lack of marketing savvy—waste management is a murky, at best fuzzy business. Onyx is the
first waste management company to try to sort it all out. Last June its employees attempted to compile a global
assessment of waste production and management, with the help of an international consulting firm specializing in
the environment. Though limited to 28 countries and the partial data available, the survey did manage to pinpoint
several major trends. Its findings do not answer all our questions, but nonetheless provide an initial glimpse of
planet waste. The estimated value of the waste management market in the 25-member European Union is 75 billion
euros.
Europe of 15 (1)
New european
union members (2)
United States
Hong Kong
Singapore
Primary-sector waste
Industry and service-sector
waste
Household waste
200 000
0
20 000
10 000
0
1 000 000
600 000
1 600 000
(1) - Including Norway; excluding
Ireland, Luxembourg and Greece.
(2) - Hungary, Poland, the Czech
Republic,Slovakia and Slovenia,
which represent 90% of the population
of the 10 new members.
GLOBAL PRODUCTION OF WASTE (2002)
Annual household waste production in
the 25-member states Europe is comparable
to that of the United States. On the
other hand, probably because of differences
in the way statistics are gathered,
European industries as broadly defined
(primary, secondary and service sectors)
generate three times as many metric
tons of waste as American industry
does. Industrial waste far surpasses the
volume of household garbage.
Depending on the country, it accounts
for between 60% (United States) and
95% (Finland) of product waste.
Getting the ball rolling in source segregation.
Europe of 15 (1)
New european
union members (2)
Canada
United States
Argentina
Hong Kong
Thailand
Singapore
0
200
(1) - Including Norway; excluding Ireland, Luxembourg and Greece.
(2) - Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia,
which represent 90% of the population of the 10 new members.
400
PER CAPITA PRODUCTION OF
HOUSEHOLD WASTE (2002)
600
800
1000
EUROPE
AMÉRICAS
Annual per capita production of household
waste varies by a ratio of one to
five (about 200 kg for a Slovak and one
metric ton for a Canadian). The ratio is a
function of the urbanization rate and
level of economic development.
ASIA
0 %
Europe of 15 (1)(3)
New European
Union Members. (2)
United States
Canada
Argentina
Hong Kong
Singapore
Other
Landfill
Australia
Taiwan
Israel
Recycling
Composting/
Biological treatment
Incineration
20 %
40 %
60 %
80 %
100 %
(1) - Including Norway; excluding
Irelang, Luxembourg and Greece.
(2) - Hungary, Poland, the Czech
Republic, Slovakia and Slovenia,
which represent 90% of the
population of the 10 new members
(3) - Household waste only
TREATMENT OF HOUSEHOLD WASTE BY
SUB-SECTOR (2002)
The most common way of dealing with
waste is to dispose of it in a landfill.
Exceptions include a few densely populated
nations such as Singapore and
countries that have diversified their subsectors.
In Germany, Denmark and the
Netherlands, between 20 and 35% of
the waste treated is incinerated.
In the Netherlands, France, Austria and
Denmark, between 50 and 60% of waste
is recycled or composted.

solvents, paint, etc. Returning humankind’s
detritus in so-called uncontrolled
dumpsites to nature is becoming
increasingly noxious, both to the eye
and the environment.
The environmental instinct
Public awareness of the pollution cau-
Household waste :
small steps forward
Catherine de Silguy is a former engineer
with Ademe, France’s environmental
and energy agency, and a
specialist in waste management history.
The author of a history of
humankind and waste published by
Le Cherche Midi, she informed
Galileo of the waste treatment
methods of our ancestors. Their
practices are still in use in some
parts of the world.
Medieval towns and cities were not
known for their cleanliness. How did
our ancestors handle their waste?
“For a long time they simply didn’t
collect it. Costermongers (fruit and
vegetable hawkers), rag-pickers and
animals roaming the streets took
care of trash.”
What kinds of animals?
“Besides poultry and dogs, mostly
pigs, which were raised in the
streets. Pigs eked out an existence
by gobbling up all the edible refuse
we tossed in the public streets. No
one even thought of complaining
about it, because pigs were valuable
waste disposal units. In Paris they
were prohibited from wandering in
1131, after the son of King Louis the
Fat was mortally injured after being
knocked down by a pig. That is the
origin of the custom of walking one’s
pig on a leash.”
People threw garbage out of the windows?
“Medieval townspeople cried “Mind
the slops!” and “Look out below!”
before hurling their garbage and
excrement out of the door or window.
This nicety did not prevent
passers-by from getting sprayed by
splashing garbage. Louis XI was
once said to have had the contents
of a chamber-pot dumped on his
head during a nocturnal stroll.
sed by waste began taking hold in the
sixties. The 1973 oil crisis, which spurred
energy conservation policies and
the search for renewable energy sources,
heightened awareness of waste,
while critics of the environmentally
unfriendly industrial growth model
began voicing their concerns.
The air in towns must have been
unbearable….
“The stench was horrific. Philippe
Auguste was so bothered by the smell
of garbage while standing at his
palace window one day that in 1184 he
ordered the streets of the capital
paved. Two main thoroughfares, which
intersected at Chatelet, were paved
over at the time. Yet more than 400
years later, half the streets in Paris
were still bare!”
Wasn’t anything done to arrange for
the removal of trash?
“There were many attempts, all of
them stymied by the uncooperativeness
of Parisians. Philippe Auguste,
Saint Louis and Louis XII passed laws
to organize collection services, to little
avail. Granted, in the last case pickup
was supposed to be financed by a special
tax, which was naturally unpopular.
François I won one round when he
succeeded in evicting farm animals
from towns and forcing building tenants
to sweep in front of their doors.”
How long did these kinds of practices
last?
“It depends on which country you’re
talking about. In New York and
Manchester, it wasn’t uncommon to
see pigs trotting through the streets
right up to the turn of the 20th century.
In France, Pasteur was the turning
point. His work and the sanitation
movement were responsible for inspiring
people to get serious about
the problem of waste. The Prefect
Poubelle ordered all household trash
to be removed in metal boxes. Earlier,
Baron Haussmann had shifted the disposal
of liquid waste from the street to
a combined sewerage system.”
The prefect Poubelle’s decision also
marked the beginning of selective
trash collection…
“His decree, which was published on
November 24,1883, made it mandatory
for Parisians to throw their trash into
three boxes: one for putrescible(i.e., able
to rot) materials, the second for glass
The discovery of the damage done
to the planet by human activities—
the greenhouse effect, acid rain,
desertification, the shrinking ozone
layer—helped forge the concept of
sustainable development popularized
at the end of the eighties. As they had
a century earlier, authorities took
and ceramics and the third for rags and
paper. Alas, the capital’s inhabitants
were not very good sorters. Especially
since owners had to pay the cost of
purchasing the metal boxes and
concierges didn’t want to put trash
cans out and bring them back in.”
Who handled garbage collection and
treatment?
“Mostly rag-pickers and any skilled
tradesman who could recycle it. There
were several thousand of them in
Paris right up until 1946. Farmers also
made extensive use of urban sludge
to fertilize their fields. After the 2nd
World War towns preferred to employ
the services of garbage collectors
with bins, horse-drawn at first, but
soon attached to automobiles.”
How has waste treatment changed?
“Up to the end of the 19th century,
people recovered what they could
and buried the rest. In Paris, the hollows
in certain boulevards and the
Buttes Chaumont park mark former
dumpsites. But after Pasteur’s findings,
public health and sanitation
experts convinced local governments
that it was better to burn waste. The
first Parisian incinerators were built
during that period. Much later, major
environmental laws were passed, followed
by the creation of the Ministry
of the Environment and an agency
dedicated to waste issues (first
Anred, then Ademe). Waste collection
spread everywhere and waste
treatment was streamlined.”
Can you find traces of the history of
waste management in our language?
“Waste terminology changes fast. Job
titles become further and further
removed from the real nature of the
work. The night soil(solid excreta) man
became the garbage man, then a sanitation
agent and now, for the time
being, a loader. In the old days, the
material collected was night soil, then
compost. Now we pick up bio-waste.”
Interview recorded by Volodia Opritchnik
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steps to ensure
public health. Regulations
were enacted 30 years
ago to encourage waste sorting
at the source, limit treatment
plant discharges into the air,
ground and water, reduce packaging,
boost recycling rates, etc.
“Waste engineers” are adapting to
the new demands. They are improving
processes and technologies,
through a dynamic, endogenic feedback
loop.
The research era
“When it comes to advancing waste
management technology, there are
two eras at Onyx: before CREED and
after CREED,” says Dominique
Helaine, Managing Director of the
Centre de recherche pour l’environnement,
l’énergie et le déchet, or
CREED. This center for environmental,
energy and waste research currently
employs 90 people, 50 of whom are
Industrial
dematerialization to
the planet’s rescue
Eco-designer Thierry Kazazian helps
companies meet the needs of consumers
by coming up with ideas for
services—not new products. It is an
original way to help reduce waste at
the source. He explains.
Is the creation of new products an
obsolete activity?
“We haven’t reached that point yet.
However, the economy is gradually
coming to terms with the idea that
the earth is not an inexhaustible
source of raw materials.”
What does that mean in concrete
terms?
“Some companies in a variety of
businesses are beginning to implement
the dematerialization strategy,
which consists of significantly
reducing the quantity of resources
used to make consumer goods.
Concretely, the idea is to make smaller,
lighter products. It’s also called
source reduction.
Another goal is to make products
last longer, so that they don’t have
to be replaced as often.
Finally, the third leg is to replace
material products with immaterial
Onyx’s Purechem hazardous waste treatment plant in Hong Kong.
ones, to shift from products to services.
Dematerialization strategy requires
reorganizing supply and changing
production tools. Closed-loop systems
are an example: companies take back
products which they leased at the end
of their lives. Some photocopier manufacturers
are retrieving worn-out
machines, reconditioning them and
putting them back on the market. The
same product can be used several
times, making it more profitable to
produce. Industrial ecology is another
approach. The waste or discards of
companies at a single site can be used
as raw materials by their neighbors,
sharply reducing the overall environmental
impact and resulting in major
savings. The best-known example is
the Kalundborg industrial park, in
Denmark.”
Is there more we can do to reduce the
production of manufacturing waste?
“The economists of the Wupperthal
Institute in Germany have shown that
we could produce just as much wealth
as we do now using four times less
raw material and energy. It’s called
Factor 4, a term that incorporates the
following: we are going to have to find
a way to reduce natural resource utilization
by a factor of four within 20
years to meet the material needs of
emerging countries (China, India), and
by a factor of 10 within 50 years, without
triggering widespread environ-
mental and economic chaos. That’s
why dematerialization is so important.”
Any other examples?
“Automakers could switch from selling
cars to offering mobility services,
by supplying automobiles tailored
to the customer’s needs at a
given point in time (anything from
small two-seater city cars to big minivans)
and combining them with
other transport services, both personal
and public. Similarly, bottlers
could market devices which, when
connected to your faucet, supplied
water that tasted and smelled the
same as bottled water, minus the
bottle.”
Do waste management companies
get to put in their two cents worth?
“Waste specialists, too, need to
think about marketing services.
They should offer to work with manufacturers
starting at the design
stage, in order to anticipate the
waste they will produce and improve
their recycling of it. A company such
as Onyx can provide advice to a producer
of industrial goods.”
Interview transcribed by V.O.

esearchers and technicians working
on “waste management” programs.
“CREED was created in 1991 at the
time of the Lalonde bill, which restricted
landfills to residual waste effective
July 2002. Tougher regulations made it
seem more and more pressing to
enhance our industry’s technical
expertise. Until then changes had
depended on the talent of entrepreneurs
who pushed the technical envelopes
in their niche. Research was
conducted by adapting more or less
proven techniques in the field, an
approach that demanded a savvy mix
of intuition, continuous fine-tuning
and modifications. It was time for
Onyx, which had become a leader in
its market, to take a global approach
to waste and acquire a research capability
worthy of its ambitions.”
Practices and
operational issues
Researchers are not shut up in some
ivory tower. As their programs move
forward, they deal with the managers
of pilot incineration plants, composting
platforms, sorting centers, landfills
and other facilities, comparing and
rounding out their own experience.
Researchers conduct practical, operations-oriented,
directly applicable
studies. “At Onyx, R&D is not the only
engine for technological change,”
continues Dominique Helaine. “The
R&D department works in particular
with the Engineering Department,
which makes a major contribution,
both in identifying needs and compiling
research results for the benefit of
operators. There are several factors
that affect the smooth implementation
of an on-site project: the researcher’s
freedom to conduct his project
Tear-down of Renault’s former Boulogne-
Billancourt factories (France), to bring them
into compliance with standards.
as he sees fit; the operator’s need for
a facility that functions well every
day; and the acquisition of engineering
know-how in order to anticipate
ways to industrialize the innovation in
the future. It’s not enough to have
ideas and use them once; techniques
must be reproducible in Tel Aviv,
London and Kolkata (formerly Calcutta).
Today’s R&D must pinpoint
the future needs of our industries, to
better anticipate the technical developments
that will be required to manage
waste in accordance with regula-
Industrial waste:
a Late-Dawning
Awareness
Frédéric Ogé, a CNRS researcher,
coordinates one of the French inventories
of potentially polluted
industrial sites. He reviewed for
Galileo the methods our forerunners
employed to manage industrial
waste and its environmental consequences.
Were the industries of yesteryear
polluting?
“Factories, mine, tanneries and
taweries have polluted the environment
during every industrial era.
If for no other reason than the fact
that toxic chemicals and metals were
handled without any precautions
whatsoever.”
For example….
“We’ve forgotten about it, but the
French worked a lot of mines in
Brittany. Discharge of mining residues
into the environment grossly
polluted many Breton rivers from
the start of the 18th century to the
end of the 19th. There are many
similar examples in many regions.
At the start of the 20th century,
for instance, 10% of France’s industrial
production was concentrated
in Plaine-Saint-Denis, near Paris.
A thousand industrial facilities,
including the biggest gas plant in
Europe, were packed together in an
area of 2,500 acres.”
Is the environment still dealing with
the pollution caused by our ancestors?
“Slag heaps and slag pits have been
created near most mining and
tions, society’s expectations and economic
imperatives.”
The pollution that didn’t roar
Public health is a major focus for
researchers. “It’s not enough anymore
to simply meet existing needs. We
have to start thinking about the problems
that could crop up. It’s up to us
to understand how our facilities create
pollutants and to find ways to neutralize
the environmental and health
risks they represent. R&D is asked to
show a degree of clearsightedness
metallurgical sites. However, when it
rains, these mountains of refuse discharge
large amounts of toxic products
into the environment and will
continue to do so for some time.
To return to Plaine-Saint-Denis, the
construction companies that worked
on the Stadium of France had to
remediate large quantities of soil
before they could start building.”
It has been almost 15 years since you
and your staff completed pre-inventories
of potentially polluted sites in
France. How many polluted sites are
there in the country?
“Our teams and the staff of BRGM
estimate that there are about
350,000 to 400,000 potentially polluted
industrial sites. There is good
reason to fear that a third of them
are, in fact, polluted.”
How did manufacturers manage
their waste in the past?
“More out of ignorance than deliberate
negligence, they usually tossed
it into sumps or cesspits, dug for
that purpose, or into water ways.
The thought was that nature would
look after us and could handle it.”
When did people become aware of
the polluting effects of waste?
“It happened in the late sixties for
liquid waste and the water agencies
were created in 1964. Between 1970
and 1980, the industrial pollution of
streams and rivers declined by 2
percent a year. On the other hand,
manufacturers did not start managing
their solid waste properly until
much more recently. Maybe 15 years
ago, when it became profitable to
produce less waste and recycle
more of it.
Interview transcribed by V.O.
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that goes beyond
simple technical expertise”.
Another specialty,
which draws more on methodological
know-how, involves
creating indicators to describe and
quantify the objective environmental
impact of Onyx’s operations…”
Synergetic and global
The many issues confronting manufacturers
call for a multidisciplinary
approach, echoed internationally by
a network of research correspondents.
This creates a better global
overview and enriches everyone’s
experience. The technical solutions
adopted in each country depend on
land availability, latitude, terrain,
geology, history, culture and so on.
Australians prefer waste landfilling to
incineration. Scandinavians stress
energy recovery. The British and Americans
tend to make cutting financial
costs a top priority. “Countries with
lots of space—the American Midwest,
Australia—rely heavily on extensive
methods such as landfill. Others,
which lack usable space (Switzerland,
Japan, Scandinavia) prefer intensive
methods such as incineration or recycling,”
“Public opinion is based on
preconceived notions, and includes a
strong emotional component when it
comes to waste management. We
must propose cutting-edge solutions
that take into account cultural, social,
environmental, technical and economic
constraints. Hence the value of
advancing several technologies at the
same time, of proposing multiple, versatile
solutions. Especially since
waste is not exactly the same all over
the world.”
Pragmatism and humility
Researchers are not the only ones
contemplating the future.
A handful of Onyx experts are working
on the “Onyx 2010” project, which
aims to anticipate medium-term changes
in waste management, including
increased recycling and reduction of
waste at the source. Onyx insists that
recycling—of materials, farm waste
and energy—is the most sophisticated
way to treat waste. Yet it also
points out that recycling must be
“well thought out,” that is, financially
realistic. Technology may be able to
devise a product or service, but there
still has to be a market for it. “It’s not
enough to focus on the environmental
merits of a treatment. It has to be
economically viable too,” sums up
the Onyx’s communication and marketing
direction. “Looking at the issue
from both an economic and environmental
standpoint, which is more important:
recycling paper at high cost
in order to make paper pulp, or using
it as a fuel? One hopes that common
sense, rather than the ideological
position of “zero waste,” would prevail.
The reason scrap metal recycling
works, for instance, is that there’s a
market for it. The price users are
willing to pay for their secondary raw
materials covers the cost of sorting
and treatment. Economic realism for-
“ Triest” - Europe’s first fully mechanized sorting center, located in Thaon-les-Vosges,
France. Here paper quality is being inspected.
ces us to ask how much society is
willing to pay to protect the environment.
Onyx tries to protect the environment
as much as it can by reconciling
technical feasibility and economic
constraints. But we can’t do it
alone.” Waste producers must also
take responsibility for improving the
environment. Manufacturers must
acquaint themselves with industrial
ecology (see the T. Kazazian interview).
And we must all return to the
age-old tradition of source sorting, a
vital prerequisite for increased waste
recycling.
Monik Malissard
(1) Histoire des hommes et de leurs ordures, Catherine
de Silguy, published by le cherche midi, 1996.
German sewer
pipes filmed in 3D
Onyx Rohr-und-Kanal- Service is
using a brand new 3D camera
developed by IBAK to inspect the
sewers it maintains. The scanner is
equipped front and back with a
high-resolution digital camera and
wide-angle lens. It can take 360
degree shots that can be stored
and processed on a computer,
then reconstituted into a film.
The camera shoots at a speed of
35 centimeters per second and
offers a more detailed, faster view
of the condition of sewer pipes
than traditional video cameras.

Eight commandments
for the future
Technology will not be the only
force driving the waste cycle revolution.
Future waste professionals
will have to teach their customers
and the general public to scale back
their waste production and help
developing countries adopt clean
technologies. Such, at least, are the
guidelines of the International Solid
Waste Association (ISWA) for the
next 10 years.
The necessary shift to sustainable
development is a major focus of
ISWA’s future-oriented thinking. An
NGO currently chaired by Jean-Paul
Léglise, technical director of SARP
Industries Onyx, and composed of
national associations, companies,
researchers, professors and students
of 81 different nationalities,
ISWA advocates best practices in
waste management.
In its 2003 report on the 10-year outlook
for the waste management
industry, ISWA proposed eight commandments
to reconcile waste management
with environmental protection,
community aspirations, manufacturer
needs and the opportunities
offered by economic globalization.
Its recommendations deal with both
the upstream side of waste management
and “pre-waste” issues.
1_Protecting the planet
ISWA recommends developing biological
treatments. Depending on
whether they are aerobic or anaerobic,
biotreatments ultimately yield organic
amendments or recycle biomass
energy, a prime example of a renewable
energy.
2_Continued progress in
collection
Waste collection and transportation
are also expected to change, starting
with technical innovations. Sophisticated
trucks—in industrialized
countries they will sport robot arm
systems and satellite guidance devices—will
make pickup cheaper and
less ardu-ous for collectors. More
widespread use of geographical information
systems will make rounds
more efficient, cutting the number of
kilometers traveled and the air pollution
caused by trucks.
3_Cleaner incineration
Modern incineration plants have
already sharply improved their environmental
performance, through better
control of combustion (less residual
waste) and more efficient fume
scrubbers.
4_From uncontrolled
dumpsites to sanitary
landfills
Progress is also expected to be made
in waste landfill, especially in developing
countries, where ISWA has counted
as many as 200,000 potentially
polluting landfills. The NGO is therefore
urging officials to neutralize
uncontrolled landfills before opening
safer ones. It is urgent that this
be done, to avoid otherwise exorbitant
environmental and cleanup
costs.
5_Waste and sustainable
development
Manufacturers and waste management
professionals will have to work
together more and more closely to
design product manufacturing and
disposal methods that generate as
little waste as possible. Another challenge
will be convincing producers
that a recyclable product can eventually
become a “secondary” raw
material, instead of waste to be destroyed.
6_Spotlight on industrial
hazardous waste
Close cooperation is also needed
with producers of industrial hazardous
waste (IHW). Although major
strides have been made with IHW in
the last several years, tonnage and
volumes have been reduced at the
expense of recycling. IHW is tending
to become more diluted and scattered,
whereas concentrated, uniform
waste would lend itself better to
recycling and environmental protection.
7_Medical waste alert
The medical waste sector could use
the same kind of inoculation.
Whether generated by centralized
facilities or individual households,
medical waste is highly diverse and
growing in volume each year. ISWA
considers it urgent to improve collection
techniques for high-risk
medical waste. Research will also
needed to find disposal solutions
for each type of waste and each type
of production site.
8_Getting the work out
Information campaigns are needed,
targeting manufacturers, health care
professionals and the general public.
“Informed” citizens, who produce
household and ordinary waste, can
reduce waste at the source by changing
their consumption habits and
promoting recycling through improved
waste sorting.
V.O.
REPORT
11

FROM CART DRIVERS
AND RAG-PICKERS
TO COMPUTER-
ASSISTED PICKUP
Waste collection is a fairly recent
concern in the scale of human history.
True, the Etruscans built the first system
of underground conduits, called
the Great Sewer, in Rome more than
five centuries before the Christian era.
And the ingenious Romans built
streets and sewer systems to channel
refuse from the city into the Tiber
River. But when the Roman Empire
fell, these first public works were
abandoned or destroyed. The Western
world sank into a period of political
and cultural regression.
The French word for waste (“déchet”),
which was coined in the 14th century,
comes from a verb (“déchoir”) that
means “to diminish in value.” The first
garbage collection efforts in Paris date
back to that time, but to no avail.
Royalty picked up the sanitation torch
in 1506 and decided to assume responsibility
for collecting and eliminating
waste. A specific tax. The “sewage and
lantern tax,” was added to the street
light tax. However, the widespread hostility
of city residents buried the ordinance
for a long, long time.
Sewage sludge accumulates
The following centuries brought little
improvement. In 1750 Jean-Jacques
Rousseau bid farewell to Paris by
crying, “Adieu, city of sludge”, the
population of Paris had swelled
from 600,000 at the time of the
Revolution to over 2 million in
1863. Garbage and filth piled up
in the streets and the air was
foul — just as it was in
Rome, London, Madrid
and New York.
Sanitation and
public health experts began to be
listened to. To counter the cholera
epidemics, the engineer Eugene
Belgrand set to work building a sewer
system for the capital. In 1872, more
than 600 km of sewer pipeline was in
place. When Pasteur established the
link between sanitation and health,
public opinion came to life. A specific
street sweeping tax was introduced in
March 1883 in Paris. Government
authorities became responsible for
maintaining the streets.
Farmer/cart drivers
Up until the 19th century, a portion of
the night soil of major European cities
was collected by nearby farmers,
whose land needed fertilizer. At dawn,
the garbage cart driver, escorted by
two sweepers, rang his heavy bell to
warn Parisians he was passing
through. The first sweeper collected
the droppings and garbage in the
street and the second cleaned up
after the cart drove by. Waste cart drivers
scooped up refuse with shovels.
Once the immediate area was clean,
they covered their cart with a tarp (a
sort of roll-up cover) and left to dump
their cargo in the dung heaps. But
when new fertilizers, such as Peruvian
guano, arrived on the market, farmers
balked at paying for the right to pick
up night soil. Towns were gradually
forced to pay for the removal of their
own waste.
The Eugene Poubelle
revolution
Eugene Poubelle, the prefect of the
Seine district, signed his famous
decree on March 7, 1884 requiring
COLLECTION
In just over a hundred years, waste collection has become an international
industry. Its technology, advancing in step with society, has moved from horsepulled
carts to garbage trucks to NGVs. The history of garbage collection—its
inventions, anecdotes, false starts and key players—is a fascinating one.
Parisians to deposit “trash and
sweepings… in the street cleaning
cart when it passes by or… in containers
of no more than 120 liters, with
two handles and a lid, painted or zinccoated
and inscribed with the building
number.” Poubelle had invented
the garbage can (poubelle, in French)!
A rag-picker with his hook and basket.
Baron Haussmann’s successor had
thought of everything, not just the
size and capacity of the cans, but
selective pickup too. The original
decree called for three types of cans:
one for decomposable waste, another
for paper and rags, and a third for
glass, ceramic and oyster shells! The
new regulation was only partially
complied with.
Still horse-drawn
When steam locomotion was developed,
the slow pace of horse-drawn
13

14
vehicles gave way
to the panache of locomotives.
However, in the
waste management business,
horse-drawn collection vehicles
persisted for several decades. In
Bordeaux the municipal street
cleaning agency created in 1890
employed 165 cart-drivers, 170 horses
and 120 carts. Paris boasted
more than 3,000 trash collectors, 700
street sweepers and 1,500 horses in
1910. In most towns waste management
consisted of picking up refuse
and storing it in huge dumpsites.
Rounds were short and horses were
all that was needed. Paris did not buy
a De Dion Bouton flusher-road sweeper,
which could do the work of four
horse-drawn sweepers, until 1911.
Other cities, however, were in no
hurry. Money was tight and people
were not ready for it. It was not until
the 1920s that the waste management
industry really began to reap
the benefits of advances in mechanization.
Making way for the electric
garbage truck
Paris, the city of lights, has a special
obligation to remain a clean city in the
eyes of the world. Starting in 1919, the
1,500 horses and 730 six cubic-meter
carts were replaced by electric and gas
tractor trucks equipped with dumping
bodies and sliding covers. Trash collection
became a full-fledged industry
in European cities, demanding substantial
investments.
When World War I ended, better land-
Nothing usable is wasted
Shadow scavengers
In Haussmann’s day rag-pickers,
whom the Baron referred to as “nomadic
rabble,” formed a hierarchical
guild in Paris. At the bottom of
the ladder were the scavengers,
who filled their sacks by scouring
the streets. They became pickers
once they acquired a back basket,
lantern and hook. One step up were
“canvassers,” who had priority
rights to trash from a group of buildings,
which they trundled away in
a cart. All these junkmen sorted
fill cells led to the advent of electric
vehicles. Two manufacturers in France,
SOVEL, for Société pour le développement
des véhicules électriques, and
VETRA, a company that built electric
vehicles and tractors, divided the market
between them. True, there were a
few drawbacks to electric motive
power, such as a lack of compression
brakes and heavy landfill cells. But
vehicles without an ignition, clutch,
gear box and radiator are easier to
maintain. What’s more, electric motive
power is well suited to trash collection
on short routes, at low speeds and
with frequent stops and daily trips
back to the garage. Engineers were
even working on the concept of a total
system: household trash collection
using electric vehicles, waste incineration,
plus recharging of the truck batteries
using the electric power genera-
their plunder before hauling it away
to master ragmen, the aristocracy of
the profession, whose laborers meticulously
classified all the materials
before sending them on to specialized
wholesalers.
The minutiae of recycling
Industry purchased 400 types of wool,
silk, cotton and canvas rags, including
100 varieties snapped up by paper
mills. Glass debris was used to produce
sand paper, bottles and windows.
Stray buttons ended up in shoe soles.
ted by the incineration! Paris planned
to use more than 100 electromobiles.
But the electric fairy’s victory was
short-lived. In the 1920s, Paris’s municipal
council decided to reorganize the
household waste pickup service by eliminating
electric trucks, which were
too costly to operate.
Compactor trucks
The waste management industry heralded
the introduction in 1934 of Fernand
Rey’s compactor trucks as revolutionary.
While the old covered trucks had
a capacity of 12 cubic meters, the Rey
truck could carry twice as much in the
same amount of space. The innovation
forced CGEA to replace its Latril chassis
with Geneve Salubra chassis, to support
the additional load.
Although trash collection modernized
quickly in most major towns in the
1920, employees sort and recycle materials on the Soulier site near Paris.
In 13th century Paris they were called loquetières, in 16th century Istanbul aradyidjiyan, in 19th century New York
rag pickers and in Cairo today zabalines. Whatever their moniker and location, rag-pickers—those rejects of society,
who make a living off the refuse of towns, are suspected of causing every social ill and are generally held in
contempt for their repulsive occupation—personify a sophisticated waste recovery and recycling system.
Frames, buttons and broken dishes
wound up as lead, copper, tin, platinum
and gold. Bones were made
into candles, buttons, knife handles,
glue and animal black for manufacturing
paints and waxes. This type of
recycling declined at the end of the
19th century: Poubelle’s decree and,
more important, the manufacture of
paper from wood and straw, dealt a
blow to the rag-picker band.
M.M.

industrialized world, it was a different
story in villages and rural areas. The
consumer society had not yet spread
to the countryside. Rural waste still
consisted mainly of mixtures of ash
and organic matter, which inhabitants
could easily recycle themselves. In the
best case scenarios, local governments
picked up the household trash
of their constituents two to four times
a month. Since they did not yet need a
service devoted exclusively to waste
pickup, they did not use the new specialized
companies. In France, the
March 22, 1890 law authorizing intercommune
associations could have
changed the status quo by allowing
local governments to band together to
collect garbage. But the communes,
eager to protect their administrative
and financial independence, balked at
pooling their resources.
The outbreak of the war in the fall of
1939 disrupted the operations of
waste management companies all
over Europe. Caught between a lack of
fuel supplies and equipment and the
need to carry on their public service,
they made do with whatever they
could cobble together. Carts sporting
tire wheels but drawn by horses reappeared
in towns and cities.
The plastic revolution
The War’s end marked the beginning
of an explosion in cleaning and sanitation
needs, both in the United
States and Europe. Modernizing economies
and the manufacturing boom,
combined with the rural exodus and
urban growth, created fantastic
opportunities for waste management
companies. And with the advent of
plastic and packaging, the contents
of trash cans were also changing.
Pollution caused by waste skyrocketed.
Beginning in the seventies, major
trash collection companies could no
longer settle for simply picking up
waste and dumping it in fields. They
also had to treat it, store it in landfills
or incinerate it. In terms of regulations,
the French law of July 15, 1975
concerning waste elimination and
materials recovery finally provided a
framework for operators and local
governments.
On the technical front, compactor
trucks became standard equipment
in the developed world. Plastic bags
and containers were introduced in
the sixties, an improvement that
greatly facilitated the work of collectors
and improved sanitation. In
France, Plastic Omnium marketed the
first hermetic plastic trash can, in
1966 in Lyon. The first roll-out containers
appeared in 1975 in Germany
and France. “The introduction of standard
containers led to automated lifting
on most European garbage
trucks. It was possible to handle collection
as a continuous production
line,” says Patrick Patey, in charge of
waste collection at Onyx.
Trash collection has changed little
since these innovations. In France,
nearly all of the 10,000 household garbage
trucks (HGT) in use today feature
rear-loading and automatic lifting.
Besides the driver, two loaders hook
containers onto the hoisting system or
throw the plastic bags into the bin.
During the eighties Germany, the
Netherlands, Switzerland and the
The advent of plastics and packaging transformed the contents of garbage cans in the
mid-20 th century.
Paper sorting is a hit
in Sheffield
COLLECTION
The very latest in sorting centers
opened its doors in Sheffield (UK) il
late December 2003. The paper and
cardboard Onyx collects from the
doorstep is delivered to the center,
then recycled by paper mill operators.
The cardboard is automatically
sorted in three steps: separation
based on size using a computer station;
selection by color via an optical
detector; an extraction from the
paper flow by means of pulsed air.
The small amount of plastic and
fabric “contaminants” are removed
manually and recycled. The contamination
level through the whole process
is 1.5%.
Blue trash cans
The driving force behind such a high
purity rate is the vigilance of the
population. “The success of the blue
bin system introduced last April
shows that Sheffield residents are
genuinely committed to recycling
Scandinavian countries adopted and protecting the environment,” 15
stresses Cyrille du Peloux, chief executive
of Onyx in the UK. The participation
rate of the 190,000 households
presently involved exceeds
60%. More than 3,000 have signed
the “recycling champions” charter,
pledging to spread the gospel. When
the facility was inaugurated, commune
mayor Jan Wilson said that the
site, which is expected to treat
25,000 metric tons of paper and
cardboard a year, “helps us make
real progress toward achieving the
government’s recycling objectives.”
Martin Simpson, Onyx Sheffield’s
manager, estimates that the selective
collection system boosted the
recycling rate for the 240,000 metric
tons of household waste collected to
12% (compared to 4% in 2001). The
goal is to reach 18% by 2005.

16
side-loading trucks
and interchangeable containers.
It was the end of
loaders hanging on to the rear
of trucks: the driver had become
the only operator. Without leaving
their cab, drivers manipulate a
robot arm to lift and empty containers
in the bin. “This system, which
is well-suited to suburban and rural
areas, sharply boosts productivity
while improving working conditions
and safety,” notes Patrick Patey. In
2003 Onyx France tested similar equipment,
with the support of CREED, for
a period of several weeks. However,
more picturesque solutions are being
found locally. In India, green waste
is still sometimes collected on the
backs of elephants! Buenos Aires,
Argentina, operates bilateral side-loading
trucks. Loaders run along both
sides of the truck and send the bags
flying! A sure way to achieve productivity—at
a cost to safety.
Selective collections changes
the picture
In the nineties the European Union’s
mandate to step up selective collection
upset the container/HGT applecart.
Companies began diversifying
their collection systems and the choice
of containers exploded. Voluntary
In late 2003 Paris opted for NGV collection vehicles—a first in France.
“Pay As You Throw”
Like virtually all Europeans, each
year Americans pay a flat rate to
have their household trash picked
up by a local public agency. The “Pay
As You Throw” (PAYT) system, introduced
in 1916 in Richmond, California
and adopted by the US
Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) in 1993, rocked the status quo
by treating collection as a service
similar to the supply of gas or electric
power. Communities that sup
port PAYT charge their fellow citizens
for the waste they produce on a prorated
basis. In most cases, residents pay
a charge for each bag of trash left out
on the street.
The goal is clear: use less, pay less.
Iowa was one of the first states to take
the plunge, by requiring counties to
halve their use of the public dumpsite
by 2000. In the small town of Forest
(population 1,500), residents pay
$11.50 a month, which is added to their
recycling, long limited to glass, was
expanded to include newsprint and
plastics. Recycling drop-offs sprouted
everywhere on sidewalks and in
parking lots. Some communities decided
to locate them underground.
Waste sorting centers proliferated
and modernized. Local governments
could choose from among various
combinations of collection options
and often mixed up their system by
employing both voluntary recycling
and door-to-door collection. These
changes complicated the job of waste
management companies. “We’re managing
increasingly complex collection
loops,” HGTs appeared on the
market, so that several types of waste
could be picked up in one run.
However, sightings of these rare birds
remain anecdotal, as the industry prefers
substitution collection, or using
the same truck to collect different
types of waste on specific days.
Mature mentalities?
What will waste collection be like in
the future? Francis Angotti, Onyx’s
Technical Director, thinks the answer
will depend more on social than technological
factors.
“In France and many European countries,
the traditional door-to-door system
is still the norm (Editor’s note:
Paris is one of the few cities in the
world to offer daily pickup), despite
the fact that it is expensive and unsafe
for operators. For local communities
the future lies in the expanded use of
drop-off centers. More than anything
else, this change will require a shift in
mentalities on the part of elected officials
and populations.”
Cleaner and cleaner HGTs
The current trend in equipment is
increasing capacities. Standard truck
bins are gradually expanding from 16
water bill, for the right to leave two
110-liter sacks of garbage on the
curbside each week. Stickers selling
for $1 apiece in the town’s stores
must be affixed to additional sacks
as needed. In the first year of the
experiment alone, the tonnage collected
by the town’s services dropped
45%, while voluntary recycling
(drop-off centers) rose 350%.

cubic meters (19 metric tons) to 18-22
cubic meters (26 metric tons). “The
increase gives us more service flexibility,”
says Patrick Patey. Engineers are
working on ever-cleaner HGTs and onboard
information systems that can
optimize efficiency.
As demands for environmental protection
grow, many actions have been
taken to reduce polluting HGT emissions.
The topic is a touchy one, since
garbage trucks can run through more
than a liter of diesel fuel per kilometer
in cities.
Today some trucks are powered by
substitute fuels, such as “Aquazole”
and “Diester”, or are equipped with
post-treatment systems such as particle
filters. Electric engines, shelved in
the fifties, are making a comeback.
Quiet, non-polluting electric HGTs are
well suited to dense urban areas
within easy distance of unloading and
dumpsites. But their limited range
(about 50 km), low payload (batteries
weigh 5 metric tons) and higher cost
(about 80,000 euros) explain their lack
of success with local governments. The
bi-mode and hybrid HGTs marketed
several years ago are also having a
tough time making any headway. On
the other hand, all eyes are on NGVs,
or natural gas vehicles. Their fuel, stored
in gas form at 200 bars, offers a
range of 300 km while sharply reducing
pollutants and exhaust fumes.
“NGVs are much quieter to operate
than diesel trucks and have proved
very flexible to drive,” adds Patrick
Patey. The only problem is that the pricey
“admission charge” for NGVs:
municipalities have to buy both the
vehicles and a rapid compression station,
limiting NGV use to communities
with fleets of at least 15 vehicles. Paris
gambled on the technology in late
2003 when it employed 98 NGV household
garbage trucks, out of a fleet of
450. Several hundred other NGV trucks
are in use in France, Spain, Italy, the
United Kingdom and Australia.
Technical strides have also been made
in trash compaction.
The Smartpack system, for instance,
adjusts hydraulic pressure to the type
of waste being collected. “We’ve
recently witnessed a consolidation in
HGT manufacturers (Editor’s note:
there are now only four in Europe).
“Which will lead to more investment in
R&D,” says a pleased Patrick Patey.
“Smart” collection
The use of on-board information systems
is also a promising line of
Automatic identification of containers, using a chip-reading portable terminal.
research. New data transmission techniques
make it possible to employ
GPS (global positioning) systems to
monitor truck rounds live. In the event
of a breakdown, delay or overload,
managers can take action in real time
to keep pickup running smoothly.
When combined with mapmaking software,
the data collected (travel time,
distances, etc.) can also optimize collection
routes. Finally, service providers
and their government customers
can use these IT tools to verify compliance
with street schedules, such as
the one used in Paris.
Traceability and on-board
weighing
Automated container identification
helps optimize container management,
that is, maintenance, cleaning
and replacement, and assess sorting
quality. Each container is identified
and tracked individually using a bar
code or radio labeling system, often
called a chip. Container ID systems
can also be combined with on-board
weighing systems, to bill households
individually based on their waste production
or to optimize rounds and
make the driver’s job easier.
A pioneer in France, the Sorinières
commune near Nantes introduced onboard
weighing in January 1999. Its
goal was to tailor the charge for household
waste pickup to actual fre-
COLLECTION
quency of service use, thereby providing
residents with an incentive to
take a more active part in selective
collection and make better use of
waste sorting units. However, the
initiative ran into strong local opposition.
“Contrary to the trend in Scandinavia
and the United States, weightbased
payment plans are “on hold” in
France, for political reasons,” says
Patrick Patey.
Meanwhile, “interactive garbage cans”
are already in use in Germany. Berlin is
testing a public container that says
“thank you” or lets out a “Yum, that
tastes good!” whenever you throw a
piece of trash in. The container is
silent at night, to avoid scaring passers-by,
but draws the eye with a fluorescent
strip. It cannot yet identify
the type of refuse deposited in it, but
surely it’s just a matter of time.
Loïc Trébord
Sources :
• Catherine de Silguy,
Histoire des hommes et de leurs ordures
du Moyen Age à nos jours,
published by Le cherche midi – 1996
• Thierry Paillard et Françoise Sirot,
Propreté Transport dans la ville,
Editions de l’IEU – 1996
17

FROM UNCONTROLLED
DUMPSITES TO
ENVIRONMENTAL
SANITARY LANDFILLS
Archeologists often end up sifting
through the waste dumps of our
ancestors in search of clues to our
history. As long as waste consisted
mainly of organic matter and a few
pots or ashes, eliminating it was not
much of a problem. Trash was disposed
of by burying it in a “hole” or
piling it up in an isolated spot. In the
Middle Ages, night soil and other
types of sludge were recovered by farmers
and spread as fertilizer on
neighboring fields and gardens. With
the marketing of mineral, then chemical
fertilizers in the late 19th century,
farmers began to abandon this natural
form of recycling. A few big cities
turned to incineration as a way of ridding
themselves of their waste. In
rural areas, where land was more
plentiful, waste was simply heaped in
dumpsites, leading to the creation of
millions of “uncontrolled” dumping
grounds all over the world. When
plastics were developed waste became
more polluting. As economies
industrialized and the consumer
society spread, garbage tonnage
increased exponentially. Rag-pickers
combed through piles of trash.
Livestock and birds rooted through
garbage in search of whatever meager
returns they could find. When the
pile got too big or rats created a
hazard, the dump was set afire.
The “click” in the sixties
European countries began to be
aware of the environmental
problems created by waste
dumps in the sixties, at
a time when over
two-thirds
of their trash ended up in one. The
environmental nuisance was flagrant.
Streams and underground water
tables were polluted by infiltration
and runoff. Odors and fumes plagued
nearby residents and businesses. The
gas from fermenting garbage caused
explosions and deadly fires.
Regulations were passed imposing
technical restrictions. The first environmentally
friendly landfills, now
called waste landfill facilities, were
created. Little by little local communities
stopped using uncontrolled
dumpsites. Today the European Union
is on the cutting edge of waste management
techniques. Its ambitious
policies concerning source separation,
recycling and energy recovery
introduced in the early nineties are
beginning to pay off. The tonnage
disposed of in landfills is gradually
shrinking, a trend that will accelerate
when the European directive limiting
the amount of organic waste that can
be deposited at landfill facilities is
implemented.
A checkered picture
However, there are huge disparities
within the European Union. “Virtuous”
countries such as Belgium, the
Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland
dispose of less than 30% of their
waste in landfills. The “could do better”
group, which uses landfills for
between 30 and 60% of their waste,
includes France, Germany, Austria and
Sweden. Bringing up the rear (over
60% of waste in landfills) are Great
Britain, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece,
Norway and Finland. However, differences
in the EU are expected to
LANDFILL
Waste dumpsites suffered from a poor publicity for many, many years.
Residents living nearby accepted their poorly managed neighbors grudgingly.
But tougher regulations and new techniques have made the most modern
waste landfill facilities exemplary industrial sites. A guided tour.
Bio power in
Australia
In Sydney, Onyx Collex will soon
create a transfer station that will
serve as a transit point for 400,000
metric tons of waste collected
during the year by municipal waste
authorities. Sited downtown, the
hub will be equipped with acoustic
barriers and systems for treating
dust and odors. Containers of nonrecyclable
waste will be shipped by
rail to Woodlawn, 250 km southeast
of the capital, to a bioreactor
housed in a former open-air
mine extending over 25 million
cubic meters.
The waste landfill facility offers
other “organic’ benefits in addition
to its annual production of 10 MW
of green power (twice the amount
of electricity generated by the wind
turbines of Australia’s wind farms).
Work to rehabilitate the mine as
well as innovative projects, such
as the use of the CO2 emitted by
the waste to heat greenhouses,
are planned for the site. Using the
existing rail system will eliminate
highway congestion, which would
have amounted to about 35,000
truck runs per year.
shrink over the next 10 years as
European standardization yields its
dividends. In the United States, landfills
and biological recycling are the
primary means of waste disposal,
a choice explained by the country’s
low population density and approach
19

20
tilted more towards
a cost-benefits analysis
than a strict desire to protect
the environment. The
waste management policy of the
pragmatic EPA, the US environmental
protection agency, focuses
on reduction at the source, product
reuse, composting and methane biogas
production. Landfills are also the
primary means of waste elimination
A weapon against climate change
By creating a highly efficient waste
landfill facility in Brazil, Onyx is
helping the Netherlands achieve its
goal of reducing greenhouse gas
emissions. Here’s now.
What is the connection between
waste landfill and combating climate
change? This may seem like a
tough exam question, and yet… the
Kyoto Protocol provides for companies
in industrialized countries
(those required to control their
greenhouse gas, or GG emissions)
to earn “emission reduction certificates”
by investing in ways to effectively
lower GG emissions in the
developing world. In UN jargon,
this is called a clean development
mechanism, or “CDM.” Onyx definitely
intends to take advantage of
this “flexibility mechanism.” Its
Brazilian subsidiary has devised a
plan to simultaneously reduce GG
emissions from the Tremembe household
waste landfill facility, located
in the Sao Paolo suburbs, and “sell”
its certified emission reductions
(CER) for carbon dioxide to the
Netherlands. That’s the basic idea.
Let’s look at how it works in practice.
Biogas, which consists primarily of
methane, can be treated and recycled as
a renewable energy.
for large-area countries such as
Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.
On the other hand, densely populated,
wealthy nations such as Japan and
Taiwan stress recycling and incineration,
like Europe. In the Japanese
islands, the amount of household
waste deposited in landfills has dropped
by almost half in 10 years, falling
from roughly 15 to 8 million metric
tons a year.
Best environmental
practices
Onyx plans to equip the major
Brazilian landfill facility (18,000
metric tons a year) with a biogas collection
and destruction system.
Biogas, which consists mostly of
methane, features a higher “global
warming power” than carbon dioxide.
By burning biogas in fume incinerators,
carbon dioxide emissions
“replace” methane emissions.
Good waste storagelandfill practices
are important in combating the
greenhouse effect.
A project that benefits both
Brazil and the Netherlands
The Netherlands, a big buyer of quotas
and GG emission reduction certificates,
chose the Tremembe landfill
facility project. Once the United
Nations finalizes acceptance, the
center will enable Brazil to reduce its
greenhouse gas emissions by almost
500,000 metric tons in 10 years and
the Dutch government, which is helping
finance the Brazilian facility, to
purchase an equivalent number of
certified emission reductions for its
manufacturers. “There will be several
benefits,” predicts Gary Crawford,
Onyx environmental and quality
assurance director. “The destruction
of the biogas will prevent atmospheric
emissions. Our image as a leader
in environmental protection will be
strengthened. And the facility will
showcase our expertise in technologies
for capturing and treating the
biogas produced by waste landfill
facilities. This is a plus in a country
like Brazil, where the practice is not
widespread.”
If the pioneering facility is built, there
is little doubt that many waste management
companies might decide to
take a page from its book.
V.O.
Developping country stick
their toe in the water
Although modern waste landfill facilities
have a very limited environmental
impact, the situation is much more critical
in developing countries. Many
cities in Asia, Africa and Latin America
continue to pile up waste in gigantic
uncontrolled dumpsites, for lack of
financial and technical resources. The
result is major sanitation and water
Green energy in the US
There are reportedly more than
340 waste landfill centers that
recycle biogas in the United
States. “There are many advantages
to using methane as a fuel,”
explains the director of Onyx’s
landfill in Saint Louis County,
Missouri. The facility powers two
boilers at a Daimler Chrysler
assembly plant, in partnership
with Toro Energy. It routes methane
through a compression
station before piping via a 7 km
pipeline. “It’s a renewable, reliable,
cheaper source of energy
than natural gas. Its recovery
improves air quality, reduces
olfactory disamenities for nearby
residents, cuts greenhouse gas
emissions and helps conserve
fossil fuels. In addition, the revenue
we earn from the sale of the
energy and the savings to the operator
help finance the operation.”
Families benefit
Onyx has also signed an agreement
with Alliant Energy in
Wisconsin. “Our eight cuttingedge
microturbine generators
supply electrical power for about
100 households,” says John King,
director of the Horicon landfill.
In Zion, Illinois, the methane sold
to Commonwealth Edison is used
to meet the electric power needs
of 5,400 families. In Eau Claire,
Wisconsin, the number is 2,600
households. The agreement reached
with the local power station
cuts annual coal consumption by
13,000 metric tons, or the equivalent
of eliminating the carbon
dioxide emissions of 22,000 cars,
planting 15,000 hectares of woodland
and saving 240,000 barrels
of oil.

and air pollution problems.
However, it doesn’t have to be that
way. In Egypt, Alexandria can proudly
point to its Borg El Arab waste landfill
facility. Created by Onyx to comply
with European safety standards, landfill
takes in roughly a million metric
tons of waste a year and replaces
an uncontrolled dumpsite located
next to a lagoon! Burkina Faso is showing
the same concern for the environment.
With the help and advice of
the regional municipality of Lyon,
Ouagadougou is in the process of
building one of the first real sanitary
landfill in West Africa.
Biogaz recovery
In the fight against the greenhouse
effect, the biogas produced by waste
sites has emerged as environmental
public enemy N°. 1. Each metric ton of
stored household waste produces
roughly 200 cubic meters of a gas mixture
composed chiefly of methane and
carbon dioxide, two of the primary
greenhouse gases. These gases can
linger for several decades.
In 2000, American dumpsites emitted
over 222 million metric tons of CO 2
equivalent, or almost half of all French
Poland inaugurates
its first environmental
dumpsite
On January 26 Onyx inaugurated the
Chrzanow waste storagelandfill facility,
near Krakow, in a ceremony attended
by the Polish minister of the environment.
Some 100,000 metric tons
of metric waste produced annually by
300,000 residents will be treated
there for at least 21 years. Although
Poland disposes of 98% of its nonhazardous
waste in landfills, this will
An air-tight cover blocks olfactory
disamenities and biogas
emission.
Leachate injection wells and/or
horizontal drains moisten the entire
biomass.
Bioreactor technology.
emissions! It is possible to recover
energy from captured biogas.
In France, over 80% of the 200 landfills
with annual capacities of over
20,000 metric tons were equipped
with a biogas capture system in late
2002. According to the minister of the
environment and sustainable development,
the 27 “laggard” sites
should be modernized by the end of
2004. Onyx has opened a Chinese
sanitary landfill in Guangzhou, China,
that meets international standards—
it recovers biogas—and is developing
a project to convert the biogas produced
by the Greenvalley landfill, in
Hong Kong, into city gas for the urban
power grid. Production is slated to
begin sometime in 2006.
Bioreactors
Many specialists believe that “bioreactors”
are the waste landfill facili-
be its first landfill dumpsite built to
European standards. Constructed in
five months with the help of Geolia,
Onyx’s design and engineering department,
the site features active and passive
tightness devices (geomembrane
and clay layer), a rain water and runoff
drainage system and a system for recovering
and treating leachates. Trash is
inspected at the entrance, to make sure
that only non-hazardous waste from the
four partner communes is admitted. A
biogas recovery and recycling system
will be added within five years. “There
will be a 30-year monitoring period
The degassing device is
densified (well and/or
horizontal drains).
Efficient tightness systems
(geomembrane) line the bottoms
and walls of the case, keeping
the liquid and gas effluents from
dispersing.
LANDFILL
ties of the future. Bioreaction recovers
leachates (1) and reintroduces them
into the waste mass, adding moisture
and nutrients to the bacteria inside it.
The resulting acceleration of biodegradation
has environmental—less
pollution, increased biogas production—and
economic—lower maintenance
costs, energy recovery—advantages.
Onyx operates 15 bioreactors in
the United States. The one in Saint
Louis County supplies enough energy
for 3,000 households and eliminates
the emission of 25,000 metric tons of
CO2 a year. In France the first Onyx
bioreactor was installed in La Vergne,
in the Vendée region.
L.T. 21
(1) Waste treated in landfill produces a liquid called
leachate as a result of the combined impact of rainwater
and natural decomposition. Leachates are rich in
organic material and trace element and must be carefully
collected and treated.
after the center closes,” says Nicolas
Rambaud, president of Onyx’s Polish
subsidiary. “After the facility is phased
out, sports fields or farmland may
be created over it.” A packaging sorting
center and composting hub will
be added soon. The entire facility—
which, Czeslaw Sleziak emphasized,
will be especially valuable in the
coming years—is part of a global project:
the environmental minister talked
about creating waste treatment
sectors, in particular through publicprivate
partnerships with Western
European companies.

FROM BURNING TO
ENERGY PRODUCTION
Spurred by the industrial revolution,
England paved the way for waste incineration
when it built an incinerator in
Paddington in 1870. Thirty years later,
the country had more than 210 incineration
plants, 14 of them in London!
The United States followed its example
and by the early 20th century used
more than 180 incinerators to burn
urban waste. Incineration also swept
the European continent, especially
Germany. Hamburg built an oven in
1892. Kiel, Frankfurt, Munich, Altona
and others followed soon afterward.
Incinerators cropped up in Denmark
(Frederiksberg, 1903), Sweden (Stockholm,
1906), Belgium (Brussels),
Switzerland (Zurich) and Poland
(Warsaw, 1906).
These small incinerators lacked the
sophistication of today’s models.
Workers loaded urban waste and
removed ash. The incinerators spewed
black smoke and ash that polluted
surrounding neighborhoods. To
solve both problems, German engineers
in particular built high smokestacks
to better disperse the smoke
and added shutter devices to their
incinerators to protect operators from
the flames.
The urban solution
For booming cities, incineration was
a miracle solution. It had the support
of both health and sanitation
experts. Medical professionals
saw destruction by fire as a
solution to the problems of
sanitation and epidemic
spread caused by accumulating
garbage.
With increa-
sing amounts of paper, rags, metal
and pottery shards finding their way
into waste, farmers were having a tougher
and tougher time using it as fertilizer.
On the other hand, it all burned
easily. Another advantage of incineration
was that facilities could be built
near housing, on small plots of land.
Finally, steam could be harnessed
from the incineration process.
France’s incineration pioneer was
Antoine Joulot, who developed the
technology in partnership with several
engineers at SEPIA (Société d’entreprise
pour l’industrie et l’agriculture).
Joulot invented a multi-chamber incinerator
he called Sepia. The number
of its chambers, or fireboxes, varied
with the population and the tonnage
of waste to be incinerated. In those
days a city-dweller generated 500
grams of waste a day. The Sepia,
which had a daily capacity of 25
metric tons, met the needs of a city of
50,000. The Touquet-Paris-Plage and
Rochefort-sur-Mer plants went into
service in 1921. Cabourg and Tours
(1923), Elbeuf (1924), Toulon (1925),
Moscow and Bucharest (1926),
Toulouse (1927) and Bogotá (1928)
also opted for the technique. It was
not until 1928 that Paris threw in its
lot with incineration, by authorizing
the creation of the Compagnie parisienne
de chauffage urbain.
Though protecting the environment
had yet to become a focus, the economic
viability of installations was already
a concern. In Tours, the heat generated
by incineration was recovered to
produce electricity in 1924 and bottom
ash was added to lime to make bricks
and breeze blocks.
INCINERATION
Incineration has spread worldwide since its industrialized introduction more
than 130 years ago, becoming a vital link in waste management. WtE Plants (1)
have significantly improved combustion and reduction at the source of
gaseous effluents. Future technologies will have to adapt to changes in the
nature of waste, minimize the production of bottom ash (2) and fly ash and do
more to recover heat energy.
In Taïwan, LuTsao
waste-to-energy plant
operated by Onyx Ta-ho
Environmental Services
Company, won the 2003
Excellent Environmental
Protection Engeneering
Award to the Chinese
Institute of
Environmental
Engineering, not only
for its construction but
also for the operating
performances.
Grill or rotating incinerators
The incineration industry experienced
its first major revolution in the thirties,
when mobile grill incinerators
were introduced. These work by
having a hopper dump waste on a
stepped conveyor belt, which moves
the trash forward and mixes it in the
combustion chamber. The technique
is simple but effective. It improves
combustion and operator working
conditions and reduces pollution. This
major innovation invented by the
German engineer Joseph Martin was
adopted throughout Europe. Martin
grill incinerators have changed many
times over the decades. At the end of
the eighties, the LBI Company develo-
23

24
ped oscillating (or
rotating) incinerators
without grills. Waste is
mixed in the combustion
chamber through the oscillating
motions of the oven, improving
combustion. However, grill incinerators
are still the most widespread
type in the world.
When space is tight
Countries vary widely with respect to
the relative importance of incineration
in their global household waste disposal
plans. Japan’s dire space crunch
has long led it to prefer incineration,
which is how it treats nearly all of its
household waste. Japan has almost
1,800 incinerators, generating over
1,000 MW of electric power, or the
equivalent of a French nuclear power
plant. In order to minimize incineration
by-products (Flue gas (3) and bottom
ash) and dioxin emissions, it has
been a long-standing champion of
“cleaner” thermal processes such as
pyrolysis and fluidized beds. Today
Japan is investing heavily in waste
gasification and vitrification techniques.
Ten plants are already up and
running and another 50 are planned.
Taiwan introduced an ambitious WtE
plants construction plan in 1992, to
build facilities with an average capacity
of about 250,000 metric tons/year.
It aims to incinerate 100% of household
waste by the year 2005, after
first recycling substantial amounts of
material. Onyx currently operates
three plants in Taiwan and is building
two others with its partner, Taiwan
Cement Corporation.
A variety of options
Conversely, the United States, which
has vast empty spaces, has done little
Gasification
technologies
Thermolysis, or pyrolysis, is a technique
similar to the one used to
make carbon: that is, a heat reaction
at moderate temperatures in the
absence of oxygen. Its early success
was mixed. At the turn of the 20th
century, Paris, Vienna and Stuttgart
built pyrolysis plants to produce
methane from waste, in the hope of
recovering energy. But the technique
had not been perfected and
the factories quickly shut down.
Energy recovery in Vaux-le-Pesnil (France).
to develop incineration. Incineration is
used to eliminate barely 15% of its
household waste, far behind landfills
(57%), recycling, composting and
methane biogas (28% for all three).
WtE plants are still found only in major
cities and the most recent was built in
1990. The situation varies widely in
Europe. The United Kingdom, which
pioneered incineration, has turned its
back on the process—probably for cost
reasons—using it to treat less than 10%
of its household waste. According to
Ademe, the most cutting-edge users of
incineration in 2000 were Denmark,
Switzerland, the Netherlands and
France, with rates ranging from about
40 to 55%. In light of the new European
incineration directive (2000/76-EC),
many countries are updating their facilities
by building new, large-capacity
WtE plants and closing their oldest and
In the sixties, applications ran into a
myriad of technical setbacks. In
France, the Grasse plant built in 1975
never became operational and a quarter
of a century later the city is still
burdened by major financial debt as a
result of a legal imbroglio. In Germany,
an entire neighborhood in the town of
Furth had to be evacuated in 1998
when gas leaked from the thermolysis
plant. The incident prompted the
Siemens Company to shelve its waste
treatment business altogether. According
to Ademe, there are about 70 pilots
and a handful of industrial ther-
most polluting installations. The number
of plants in France has dropped from
300 in 1998 to less than 130 today, while
total incineration capacity has risen.
Cleaner and more effective
Though in the 80s and 90s many association
movements all over Europe
denounced highly polluting incinerators
which failed to meet regulatory
standards, things have sharply improved
since. Technology is the reason.
“The treatment of fumes is the field
that has made the most strides in the
last 20 years,” stresses Francis Angotti,
Onyx’s Technical Director. “Current environmental
standards are very strict and
we have very sophisticated techniques
for neutralizing all kinds of emissions,
including dioxins. We manage very
complex combustion and fume treatment
systems every day. As a result,
our technicians are highly skilled.”
molysis facilities in the entire world
(in Hungary, Germany, Japan and
Italy). In France, the Arras integrated
thermolysis plant slated to treat
50,000 metric tons of waste annually
expects to open for business
soon. Japan invests heavily in waste
gasification and has had some success.
Gasification is attractive because
it sharply reduces incineration
by-products and thus residual
waste. However, it demands careful
prescreening of waste.

Fluidized bed
incinerators
Long used to burn coal, the fluidized
bed technique consists of burning
solid waste in a bed of inert material,
usually sand, suspended through the
injection of air. The fluidized bed can be
concentrated at the base of the incinerator
(dense fluidized bed) or dispersed
throughout the entire combustion
chamber (rotating or circulating fluidized
bed). Fluidized bed incinerators
put out more energy than grill incinerators
and sharply reduce the production
of bottom ash. They are reportedly
cheaper to clean and maintain.
However, feedback concerning the
technology is still limited. In France, the
five local communities that opted for
fluidized bed incinerators (Mantes,
Monthion, Doulens, Gien and Mulhouse)
have recently run into a number
of technical problems. “There is no
miracle technology when it comes to
eliminating waste,” say Ademe spokespeople.
“Before making any decision,
local communities must study
the technical reliability of the process
and make sure there is a way to
manage incineration by-products.”
Household waste incineration plant
The integration of plants into the surrounding
landscape is also a major
focus. “Considerable efforts have been
made in the area of transparency
and keeping neighbors informed,”
notes Hubert de Chefdebien, Corporate
Relations Director for CNIM, one of the
biggest incinerator manufacturers.
But despite these remarkable strides,
incineration still suffers from an excess
of negative press. Many proposed
plants in Europe are challenged by environmental
associations and nearby
residents and businesses. “The NIMBY
(not in my backyard) phenomenon is a
huge obstacle to the development and
economic viability of waste management
technologies,” laments Laurent
Carrabin, Onyx director of operations.
“Recycling the energy from incineration
and limiting the transport of waste
requires building plants near population
centers, but it’s harder and harder
to find a site.” In Europe priorities have
shifted to sorting and biological and
materials recycling. Comprehensive
waste management systems are being
set up, including the incineration of
residual waste. “Future waste products
will probably have higher calorific
power,” says Laurent Carrabin.
“Classic incineration techniques will, of
1 Storage pit
gases, using one of the following three processes
that conform to standards. In dry
2 The furnace, the heart of the plant, is cleaning, a solid material, usually lime, is
where the combustible portion of the injected.
waste is oxidized. To achieve optimal inci- Powder or sprayed limestone wash replaneration,
the waste is evenly distribued on ces the lime in the semi-humid method.
the combustion platform (grilles, cylinder) And the wet method consist of cleaning the
and shuffled using warm air from the inci- gases by injecting water and neutralizing
nerator. The qulity of combustion depends
on four factors:
> oxygen content,
> temperature (which ranges between 900
and 1000 ° C),
> turbulence
> residence time of waste (between
30 and 60 minutes).
Incinerators’ furnaces work well if the 3T
rule (temperature, turbulence, time of residence)
is followed.
the acids with soda or lime.
3 When oxidation is complete, combustion
gases are treated. The gases are first
cooled from 1,000 to 300 degrees C, the
1
depolluted. Polluants consist chiefly of
WASTE
dust, acid gases (hydrochloric acid and sul- 100,000 metric tons/year
fure fluorides and oxides), heavy metals BOTTOM
and unburned organic compounds. The
first step is to remove the dust from the
ASH
TREATMENT
fumes using electrostatic precipitators and
RAW BOTTOM ASH
bag filters. Most of the heavy metal is recovered
at the same time.
The second step involves neutralizing the
23,000 metric tons/year
SELF-CONSUMPTION
BY CENTRAL PLANT
8MWh/year
BOILER
INCINERATOR
course, always be usable, as long as
they’re combined with complementary
treatments to drastically reduce the
production of fly ash and bottom ash.
These changes should give a boost to
new technologies, such as fluidized
beds and gasification.”
L.T.
4 Most cooling systems recover energy
through exchangers. This technique can be
used to produce overheated water or
steam.
5 System for recovering incineration
by-products.
Fume ventilation device.
TURBINE GENERATOR
FUME
TREATMENT
ASH and HWIFR
8,000 metric
tons/year
HAZARDOUS WASTE
STORAGE FACILITY
INCINERATION
Heart of the plant, the furnace is where
the combustible portion of the waste is
oxidized.
(1) Waste to energy plants
(2) Bottom ash is the slag or solid residue left over from
waste combustion that is recovered from the bottom
of a furnace.
(2) Waste incineration flue gas treatment residues are
solid residues collected after the chemical treatment
of smoke to reduce pollution.
6
2
5
4
3
ELECTRICITY
40 000 MWh/year
6
25

WHY A SHIELD IN THE
STRATOSPHERE IS
TOXIC ON THE GROUD
Air pollution has changed in the last century.
While some pollutants are on the decline, others are more and more
worrisome to scientists. Summer pollution peaks have highlighted the kind
of damage ozone can do close to the earth. And satellites are carefully
monitoring the shrinking of the ozone layer at the southern tip of the planet.
Galileo takes a look at the two sides of this much-talked-about gas.
Human beings breathe in about 15
cubic meters of air each day. They
have done this for centuries. However,
the composition of the air breathed by
a resident of a megalopolis today is a
far cry from what it was for a peasant
in the 18th century.
Air pollution can be defined as any
change in the chemical composition of
the atmosphere that could have harmful
effects on humans or the environment.
Some pollution, such as volcanic
eruptions and forest fires, are
natural in origin. However, human
activities are the most common cause
of deteriorating air quality.
The advent of the industrial era and
mechanization upset the natural
balance by spewing new groups of
pollutants into the atmosphere. At the
end of the 19th century, European
capitals such as London, Paris and
Berlin were often immersed in a dark
cloud of pollution caused by coal burning.
Today urban pollution has changed
radically. Winter pollution caused
by sulfur oxides and dust has given
way to summer “smog”—a diffuse
sort of pollution consisting of a mix of
hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide, volatile
organic compounds (VOCs) and fine
particles. The change reflects both
the pollution cleanup efforts of
manufacturers and the explosion of
transportation. After 30 years of
being subjected to ever more
Draconian emission standards,
industry has learned to produce
more while polluting less.
The result has been a
spectacular drop in
sulfur oxide, dust
and heavy
metal emissions. Over the same period,
however, road traffic has more than
doubled. There were 500 million vehicles
in the world in 2001, almost 200
million of them in Europe.
Health impacts
“Contrary to what the general public
thinks, overall emissions of pollutants
have been falling steadily over the
years,” say officials in the Paris
atmospheric pollution office of the
Ministry of the Environment and
Sustainable Development. The gradual
elimination of leaded gas in
Europe has cut the amount of lead
emitted into the atmosphere by a factor
of 10. Yet these improvements do
not mean that we are breathing better
quality air. The world is becoming
more and more urbanized: about
three-quarters of Europeans now live
in cities. Protecting your lungs if you
live on the outskirts of a major city is
not always possible.
Strides in technology and expanded
networks for measuring air quality
enable us to evaluate the extent of air
pollution more precisely.
Although urban pollution has a much
smaller negative impact on health
than tobacco, we have the right to
demand “pure” air. A moderate increase
in ozone or nitrogen oxide concentrations
causes a jump in the number
of hospitalizations for respiratory or
heart problems, premature mortality
among high-risk populations and a
rise in respiratory illnesses in children.
Health professionals are beginning to
wonder whether baseline pollution,
rather than pollution spikes, is not the
greatest risk factor for city-dwellers. It
Winter
pollution caused
by sulfur oxides
and dust has given way
to summer ‘smog’—
a diffuse sort of
pollution consisting
of a mix of
hydrocarbons, nitrogen
oxide, volatile organic
compounds and fine
particles.
is a risk that may well cause a resurgence
in lung cancer or cardiovascular
accidents 10 to 20 years from now.
In the cow
For many years scientists did not even
know what ozone was, yet it now tops
the list of pollutants worldwide. True,
ozone gas is a natural component of
the stratosphere. It forms 25 km
above our heads, from oxygen, under
the action of ultraviolet rays. The
“ozone layer” filters 86% of the sun’s
ultraviolet rays. Without this natural
shield, we could not live on the earth.
Yet in the cow shed, ozone is a toxic
gas. Ozone that attaches to molecules
causes destructive chemical reactions.
It is used in a controlled fashion
in industry as a bactericide. Ninety
percent of so-called tropospheric
ozone comes from automobile and
OZONE
27

28
industrial pollution.
Under the sun’s
effect, some air pollutants,
or “precursors,” including
nitrogen oxide, the unburned
hydrocarbons of exhaust fumes
and volatile organic compounds,
are converted to ozone. The remaining
10% comes from the stratosphere
and is added to the ozone created
by pollution. This photochemical pollution
affects our respiratory tracts
and appears to be the cause of the
rise in asthma cases. The World
Health Organization (WHO) estimates
that acute respiratory effects can
appear in humans at hourly concentrations
of over 160 microg/cu. meters
(120 microg/cu. meter in children).
Summer pollution peaks
Spikes in ozone pollution are directly
related to weather conditions, specifically
sunshine, high temperatures and
low winds. They occur primarily in the
summer—usually in late afternoon,
when it is sunny and high-pressure
systems are strong—and can affect
entire regions. Peak ozone concentrations
are found in cities, suburbs and
the countryside alike. Carried by the
wind, clouds of precursor pollutants,
such as nitrogen oxide, produced in
the city mix with volatile substances
emitted by forests (terpenes, for
example) and create ozone under the
effect of the sun. In Ile-de-France, the
strongest ozone concentrations are
found 20 km southwest of Paris.
Likewise, in Grenoble, the residents
living 10 km southwest of the city are
the ones that breathe in the most
ozone in the summertime.
Record peaks in 2003
Scientists are extremely worried
about the growth in photochemical
pollution in the northern hemisphere.
Ozone level readings taken during the
peak in southern France, far from
major population centers, are five
times higher than they were in the
19th century. The summer of 2003 was
exceptional for its sunny skies and
heat wave temperatures; it also beat
all the records for ozone pollution.
According to the European Environmental
Agency (EEA), which has just
published a study of 29 countries, the
ozone pollution that afflicted much of
Europe from April to August “is the
most serious in 10 years.” Only eight
countries—the Scandinavian and
Baltic countries and Ireland—remained
below alert thresholds. Germany,
France, Belgium, Spain, Italy and
Switzerland were the hardest hit.
Ademe (Agence de l’environnement et
de la maitrise de l’énergie) estimates
that half of all French people, or more
than 30 million individuals, were subjected
to excessive ozone levels this
summer. The Institut de veille sanitaire
(INVS) is currently compiling an
assessment of the additional mortality
caused by air pollution. According
to Jean-Félix Bernard, chairman of
France’s National Air Council (NCA),
“at least 2,000” of the 14,000 deaths
recorded this summer in France may
be due to its record ozone concentrations!
This is especially worrisome
when one considers that, according to
Météo France (weather service), the
probability of heat waves will quintuple
between now and the end of the
century, due to the warming caused
by greenhouse gases.
A European issue
This summer’s heat wave showed that
the fight against ozone pollution will
only succeed if it is Europe-wide. Map
readings from last August show a
wide ozone swath, extending from
northern Italy to the center of
Germany and running through France
and the Benelux countries. Readings
taken around the Berre pool prove
that ozone molecules produced in
Genoa (Genova), Italy, were carried
there by winds. The same observation
was made between the Benelux countries
and Ile-de-France and between
Alsace and Germany. The European
Union has published directives restricting
vehicle emissions. It is mandating
a 30% reduction in ozone “precursor”
gases in the atmosphere by
2010. In France, the environmental
and sustainable development minister
announced in early November an
ambitious plan to combat air pollution,
which aims to cut sulfur dioxide,
nitrogen oxide and volatile organic
compounds by 40% by 2010.
In Antarctica
While industrialized countries fret
about photochemical pollution, the
southern tip of the planet is in jeopardy
from the shrinking ozone layer. The
problem of the “ozone layer hole”
above Antarctica was raised for the
The Difficulty
of breathing in
Asian cities
Twelve of the world’s 15 cities with
the highest levels of polluting
particles—among them Beijing,
Kolkata, Jakarta, New Delhi,
Shangai and Tehran—are in Asia.
In addition, six of them have the
highest levels of atmospheric SO 2 .
Air pollution levels in Asia far
esceed WHO’s international recommendations.

A U.V. exposure rate indicator, in Punta Arenas (Patagonia, Chile).
first time by scientists in the late
seventies.
Later research confirmed not only the
existence of the hole, but its expansion.
The hole in the ozone layer has
doubled in size since it was discovered,
growing to almost 29 million sq.
kilometers, about 10 times the area of
the European Union, in September
2003. There are days when the ozone
layer loses almost 50% of its effectiveness
in filtering UV rays, posing
major risks to people and nature.
Human activity is largely responsible
for the shrinking of the ozone layer.
The primary culprits are CFCs, or
chlorofluorocarbons, and HCFCs, or
hydrochlorofluorocarbons.
Both chemicals have a long history of
use in solvents, refrigerants and aerosols.
Once emitted into the air, these
pollutants reach the stratosphere and
break down under the effect of ultraviolet
rays. The reaction releases chlorine,
which violently attacks the ozone
layer. A single atom of chlorine can
destroy more than 100,000 molecules
of ozone!
CFC and HCFC pollutants are dispersed
throughout the planet. However,
because of its extreme weather conditions,
Antarctica is the region most
sensitive to their effects. The hole in
the ozone layer grows larger in
September, when it is spring in the
southern hemisphere. Rising temperatures
and the presence of ice crystals
in the stratospheric polar clouds
trigger chemical reactions between
ozone molecules and CFC and HCFC
components.
Top surveillance
Awareness of the problem gave rise to
the Vienna convention to protect the
ozone layer in 1985, followed by the
Montreal protocol in 1987, which set
targets for reducing substances
hazardous to the ozone layer. Ratified
by more than 180 countries, the
Montreal protocol took effect on
January 1, 1989. It was amended and
modified in 1990 in London, in 1992 in
Copenhagen, in 1995 in Vienna, in
1997 in Montreal and in 1999 in
Beijing . The goal is to restore the
ozone layer over a period of 50 years.
All ozone-destroying substances, with
the exception of HFCFs and methyl
bromide, have already been virtually
eliminated in industrial nations.
Developing countries that signed the
Montreal protocol have until 2010 to
totally eliminate CFCs and halons (1).
HCFCs, used as a temporary replacement
for CFCs, will not be totally banned
until 2030. On the other hand,
industrialized countries will stop producing
them in 2004 (2016 for the
developing world).
There is no question that international
regulations have reduced the annual
worldwide production of substances
that shrink the ozone layer.
However, given the time lag between
the production of such substances
and their effects, chlorine and bromine
concentrations linger. Despite the
success of this international agreement,
NASA scientists who have been
monitoring changes in the ozone layer
hole for years think it will take until
2050—all things being equal—for the
ozone layer to mend.
In addition, recent studies show that
global warming caused by the greenhouse
effect also has an impact on the
shrinking of the ozone layer. From
Australia to South Africa, Chile to
Argentina, earthlings still have reason
to worry.
L.T.
(1) Halons are gas which endanger the ozone layer.
Living under the bright
sun of Punta Arenas
Located more than 3,000 kilometers
south of Santiago, Chile, the
town of Punta Arenas is on the fringes
of the “ozone layer hole” (southern
latitude of 53 degrees). “On
some days solar radiation is greater
in Punta Arenas than it is at an
altitude of 4,000 meters at the
equator,” charges Jaime Abarca,
the only dermatologist in all of
Patagonia. “There is a good chance
we will see a significant jump in the
number of skin cancers over the
next few years.”
A flag atop a pole placed in front of
the Pulgarcito kindergarten proclaims
the day’s level of UV exposure.
If it is yellow, the children
may not go outside between 11
a.m. and 3 p.m.. If it is red, watch
out: you are sure to get a good sunburn
within 5 minutes. To encourage
children to protect themselves
from the sun, Claudia Vivar, the
school’s principal, plans activities
featuring the mascot, Paul the Auk.
Her goal: to teach children to put
sunscreen on their faces, wear sunglasses
and never leave the house
without wearing a hat.
OZONE
29

MULTINATIONALS :
HOW FAR IS TOO FAR?
Major international corporations are being asked to help promote sustainable
development in emerging nations. How do they behave as good corporate
citizens without infringing on the authority of local governments?

T he
international community is
so committed to sustainable
development that it has asked
companies to come up with their own
ideas for improving society and protecting
the environment. By doing
more than they are legally required to
do. By being open to dialogue with
their stakeholders—employees, vendors,
customers, neighbors, public
bodies, shareholders and NGOs—in
developed and developing countries
alike. In order to beat the “bad guy”
rap and its potential financial fallout,
multinationals are under public pressure
to comply with a code of ethics.
Shell took a hit both to its sales and
its image when Greenpeace called for
a boycott of the company over plans
to sink the Brent Spar oil platform in
the North Sea when its useful life was
over. This was after Shell’s image had
already been tarnished by its activities
in Nigeria, where the government
executed opponents of one of its
plans to locate facilities there.
Elizabeth Pastore-Reiss and Hervé
Naillon, in their book “Ethical Marketing,”
estimate that the oil company
spent 32 million dollars in image
advertising after the two events,
which spurred Shell’s “conversion” to
sustainable development.
The fear of absolute power
But despite the pressure on them to
be socially responsible, multinationals
are suspected of wielding absolute
power. The “Stop multinationals
from ruling the world” day of action,
organized by the NGO Friends of the
Earth prior to the Johannesburg summit,
illustrates the public’s misgivings.
The economic clout of multinationals
explains why so much is
expected of them: according to
Novethic, 29 of the top 100 economic
entities in the world are multinationals.
But multinationals inspire fear.
Given that the label “good corporate
citizen” implies that one has a political
conscience, how does a company
avoid replacing the authorities when
its economic power gives it much
more latitude for action than emerging
nation governments enjoy?
How can multinationals behave as
responsible members of society
without being accused of economic
neocolonialism? How do
they show their respect for
local physical and cultural
environments and national
sovereignty?
When they
intervene with government authorities,
how do they avoid going too far?
Standards
A few companies have chosen to police
themselves by adopting standards
or good conduct codes that cover working
conditions, human rights and
environmental protection. Pioneers
include the US ice cream maker Ben &
Jerry’s, which adopted standards on
its own initiative in 1985, and the
British cosmetics retailer Body Shop,
which pledged to avoid the use of
child labor in 1991. Retail groups that
deal with vendors in the developing
world have begun selecting their suppliers
and subcontractors on the basis
of social and environmental standards.
For example, Ikea has summarized
its minimum vendor requirements
into a good conduct code; its
suppliers must comply with national
laws, the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, the ILO’s Declaration
on basic labor rights and principles
and the Rio Declaration on sustainable
development. In 2000 the major
energy and mining corporations
voluntarily adopted safety and human
rights principles. All these initiatives
involve companies setting standards,
traditionally the domain of government.
However, by citing universal
principles and texts concerning which
there is a broad international consensus,
they respect national sovereignty.
Moreover, both OECD guidelines and
the ILO’s Tripartite Declaration concerning
multinationals urge them to use
best practices and to elevate standards
in the countries in which they
do business.
However, guidelines are only effective
when enforced. “Codes of conduct
only break down if they are not used,”
points out Jacques-Noel Leclercq,
head of the Enterprises Commission
of Amnesty International in France.
Hence the creation of partnerships
with NGOs for auditing purposes,
such as the one between Carrefour
and the International Human Rights
Federation.
Helping local communities
Companies also enter the public
domain when they do things that benefit
the community as a whole. To further
their integration into local markets,
companies sometimes finance,
outside their own areas, programs or
infrastructure that contribute to the
development of local communities.
Examples include hospitals, schools,
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
How do you
avoid replacing the
authorities when your
economic power gives
you more latitude for
action than the
government?
How do you avoid being
accused of
neocolonialism?
housing, roads and so on. In the
Philippines Coca Cola is financing the
Little Red Schoolhouse project, which
builds and equips schools and trains
associations to manage them. In
Algeria, BP is helping to finance four
seawater desalination plants, which
will supply 27,000 people with drinking
water. In sub-Saharan Africa, Shell is
not only paying for the medical care of
its employees and their family members
afflicted with AIDS, it is involved in
public health campaigns that serve a
broader segment of the population.
In Yamoussoukro, Côte d’Ivoire, for
example, Shell has partnered with
Popu-lation Services International and
local NGOs to open a center to educate
young people about avoiding infection
by the AIDS virus. In India, Ikea supports
a UNICEF program to vaccinate
and protect children. The real issue
here does not seem to be the legitimacy
of corporate intervention—given 31
Renovation of the water and wastewater
systems for the Tangier kasbah, by
SADE-CHTM (Compagnie des travaux
hydroliques du Magreb).

32
government incapacity
to act, companies
team up with the international
community on aid
initiatives—but on how long it
will last (see interview with Jean-
Pierre Sicard).
Fields that serve the public
interest
Other companies serve the public
interest because of the nature of their
work. For example, VE’s four divisions—water,
public transport, energy
and waste management—provide
services of vital importance to urban
residents and the smooth functioning
of towns and cities. Given the demographic
explosion of megacities in
developing countries, the stakes are
high. Sixty percent of population centers
with over 4 million residents are
currently located in the developing
world; by 2025, 80% of the world’s
urban population will live in developing
countries. If the past is any indi-
« Corporate
sponsorship are
secondary to a
company’s direct
responsibilities as a
business. »
Created in 2001 by the Caisse des
depots et consignations, Novethic
is a watchdog organization that
conducts studies, plans conferences
and disseminates information
on corporate social responsibility
and socially responsible investing.
Its chairman Jean-Pierre Sicard,
whom Galileo interviewed, believes
that corporate social responsibility
can basically be judged by
what a company does.
Where do you draw the line between
the social responsibility of multinationals
and the responsibility of
developing country governments?
“When companies approach the
issue of their responsibility directly,
by looking at the economic, environmental
and social impacts of their
activities, they’re sticking to their
own business. Even if they broaden
their scope to include their suppliers,
as retail and textile groups
have done in Asia.
cation, the quality of urban logistics
and organization are key factors in the
success of economic development.
VE maintains the legal status of a service
contractor; it is careful to clearly
distinguish its role from that of
government authorities (see interview
with Denis Gasquet).
Relationships and behavior
Another point of contact between
government authorities and multinationals
is their respective representatives’
relationships. Business ethics
either imbue their behavior and attitudes
or they do not. There are many
gray areas and key nuances. Nonetheless,
there is a difference between
listening to needs so that you can try
to meet them and proposing off-theshelf
solutions that show no knowledge
of the terrain. It often comes down
to how much credit you are inclined to
give your discussion partners—who
are motivated by their own culture—
on whether you acknowledge or deny
Companies are under pressure from
public opinion in industrialized nations
and have every right to ask their
subcontractors in the developing
world to improve in certain areas,
such as greenhouse gas emissions,
child labor, ILO standards, etc.
It’s often tough to apply Western standards
right away, without raising procurement
costs. Initially we’re talking
about minimum standards—which
are often in effect but not complied
with. In practice companies rarely go
beyond ILO standards, for which there
is a broad international consensus.
So they don’t tread on government
prerogatives. No one criticizes companies
for imposing standards higher
than the average standard in emerging
countries. If higher costs lead to
productivity improvements, so much
the better.”
And when companies take on responsibilities
outside the strict realm of
their business?
“In our view, community sponsorships
and support are secondary to a company’s
direct responsibility as a business.
When multinationals get involved
in health or educational issues or
in constructing low-income housing,
they’re verging on the kind of paternalism
that existed in Europe in the 19th
century. You could also use the word
neocolonialism. But is that necessari-
their legitimacy as decision-makers.
Likewise, offering advice to a government
or local community that requested
input, versus serving as an official
consultant, determines whether or
not you will be both judge and party
in decisions to award contracts. Isn’t
dictating a decision, in other words,
making it for a decision-maker, a form
of de facto compensation? We are
entering the murky waters of corruption
and conflicts of interest. To negotiate
its rocky shoals, the Swiss pharmaceutical
group Novartis included
conflict of interest and corruption guidelines
in its code of good conduct.
The code states that “No one, whether
an individual or company, dealing
with an employee of Novartis
may profit unduly from Novartis as a
result of his position or relationships.”
This guideline refers back to
the OECD convention against the corruption
of foreign government agents
involved in international commercial
transactions, to wit: “No employee
ly derogatory? They’re helping to
promote social progress, in places
where the government is deficient,
for various local political reasons.
Instead of acting unilaterally, it’s a
better idea if they work with representatives
of local civil society—
which they have a tendency to do,
out of enlightened self-interest, in
order to stabilize their business in
the long term. It’s even good to establish
a three-way dialogue among
companies, local NGOs and local
and national governments. That is
the way to go to make it work effectively
in the long run. That’s what is
happening in South Africa, for example.
In other countries, it’s been
more difficult.”
What kind of leeway do you see
companies as having in totalitarian
countries?
“We think it’s important that they
not act unilaterally. When nations
lack legitimate representation, companies
do well to consult human
rights associations and local NGOs.
The latter may decide that the presence
of multinationals benefits the
country. But when they believe that
only the government is reaping the
benefits—as is the case in Myanmar
(Burma) — it’s better to boycott the
country.”

« Meffling in politics
creates a very
unfortunate conflict of
interests. »
Denis Gasquet,
CEO of Onyx & Executive Vice
President of Veolia Environnement
Give us some concrete examples of
things Onyx is doing to promote
sustainable development in emerging
countries.
“Our corporate mission is to protect
the environment, all over the world.
Environmental standards in emerging
countries are often pretty lax.
To safeguard nature’s long-term
future, Onyx goes beyond its legal
obligations by imposing minimum
requirements for waste storage. Too
bad if that gets us screened out of
bid invitations!
We prefer to do things the right way.
We’re proud of our intransigence,
which we hope will be imitated by
others in our industry. We also hope
that international financing organizations
will some day adopt our
standards as criteria for choosing
projects. In developing countries
waste management investments are
viable if they’re easy to use by companies
just starting to develop technologically
and if they don’t harm the environment.
So you have to support a
minimum state of the art, one that is
culturally acceptable and environmentally
tolerable.”
You seem eager to reconcile pragmatism
and ethics…
“Don’t forget modesty. It would be extremely
damaging to impose Western
models on countries that have different
cultures, different social organizations,
a different level of economic
development and different skills and
expertise.
Right now, Onyx and local communities
are going through a learning process
together in India, Egypt, Morocco
and China! On our side, we’re learning
to adapt the way we do things to our
markets of the future. Our customers
are learning how to work with an
international group. Onyx stresses
innovation and dialogue, while remaining
true to its own principles. We’re
doing basic work, which aims to reduce
pollution, not shift it. We collect garbage
only if we sense a clear political
willingness to establish a permanent
waste treatment system. However,
At the end of 2002 Onyx sponsored an expedition to Nepal to clean up the base camp
of Dhanlagiri (8,167 meters). Almost 700 kg of trash were collected and sorted,
in an initiative that raised French and Nepalese awareness of the pollution of fragile
ecosystems.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
elections sometimes bring about a
change in how municipal authorities
see things…”
Where do you draw the line between
your responsibility as a good corporate
citizen and the responsibility of
politicians?
“We are responsible for alerting
future generations about the harm
human activities can do to the planet
and suggesting and developing
ways to conserve natural resources
and reduce pollution. In order to stay
credible as a corporation, we must
also stay in our place and not usurp
the role of political decision-makers.
To each his own job, based on personal
skills and knowledge. Onyx offers
government authorities its technical
expertise, long-term vision, international
experience and ideas. Onyx
can suggest solutions, but it is not up
to us to set environmental strategy.
Political decisions by their nature
concern society as a whole, in all its
aspects.
Politics are much too complex a field
for us to venture into without causing
harm and disrupting local socioeconomic
systems. What’s more, meddling
in politics creates a very unfortunate
conflict of interests.”
may confer any kind of financial
advantage on a government representative
or public establishment for the
purpose of winning a contract or
favors.” Though the means of monitoring
compliance have not been spelled
out, at least the principles have
been stated.
Defending democratic values
Many NGOs clearly call for Western
companies to exemplify and defend
their basic values, in places where
political regimes are far from democratic.
Almost 1,200 firms have signed
the Global Compact, which sets forth
the principles of human rights and
labor rights, among other things. Just
over 40 companies make explicit reference
to the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights adopted by the United
Nations in 1948. In its green paper
advocating a European framework for
corporate social responsibility, the
European Commission touches on the
complexity of the situation: “The topic
of human rights is extremely complex
and raises political, legal and moral
problems. Enterprises face thorny
33

34
issues: how to
know when their areas
of responsibility differ from
those of governments, how to
monitor the compliance of their
business partners with their basic
values, what approach and working
methods they should adopt in
countries in which human rights are
frequently violated.” United Nations,
ILO and OECD documents urging them
to promote human rights also affirm
the need to respect national sovereignty.
Total and its California partner
Unilocal’s commitment to develop and
work the Yanada gas deposit in
Myanmar (Burma) illustrates the pro-
« Human rights is
the value that feeds
sustainable
development. »
Jacques-Noël Leclercq,
head of the Enterprise Committee
of Amnesty International in France.
“Enterprises cannot credibly claim
to promote sustainable development
if they don’t support human
rights,” says Jacques-Noel Leclercq.
And Amnesty International asks
them to show their support by publicly
and in writing adhering to the
Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. “Referring to the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights is not
an attempt to export Western
values. It promotes values that are
universal. All UN member states,
including non-democratic ones,
recognize the Declaration. It also
does not constitute meddling in
local politics. The UN text says that
all individuals and all social bodies
must respect and promote human
rights. We’re not calling for companies
to meddle in government
affairs. We’re asking them to make
their concern for human rights
known. Once they publicize their
values in a code of conduct and
incorporate them into their actual
practices, all stakeholders can refer
to them and apply pressure to see
that they are implemented.”
Win-win
To advance the cause of human
rights, Amnesty International sup-
blem. On the one hand, NGOs are calling
for a boycott of the country, on the
grounds that the military junta is still
in place and is getting rich on the profits
created by Western companies. On
the other, the oil company argues that
no international decision requires it to
leave and claims that it is promoting
human rights there, contributing to
the country’s socioeconomic development
and improving the lives of its
population. Total has invested 10
million dollars since 1995 to promote
the health, education and professional
lives of the 43,000 people living in
the vicinity of the pipeline.
Legal actions are under way concer-
ports open dialogue with companies.
However, it does not hesitate
to condemn practices it does not
approve of if dialogue fails. Jacques-
Noel Leclercq, a former sales manager
at Bull, advocates the “win-win”
approach. “Protecting human rights
is the value that feeds sustainable
development. It’s an asset for a company.
We don’t have any problem
with it if a company’s effective commitment
wins it market share!
Anything that goes beyond marketing
hype helps advance the cause
of human rights.” However, Leclercq
recognizes that the financial community
has not yet fully assimilated
the notion of sustainable development,
which is an obstacle. “We’re
trying to identify the groups willing
to be the first to promote a human
right. We hope that their competitors
will be pulled along in their
wake.”
An unlikely neutrality
Amnesty International is quick to
point out the human rights risks of
major international projects. An
example is the planned pipeline
across Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan.
“Our role is to dissuade companies
from negotiating clauses that
adversely affect human rights—and
themselves, insofar as they become
complicit in the violations. When
they contract with a government,
they are not in a neutral relationship.
The situation is more serious
than with a private-sector partner.
Negotiations have a much greater
effect on the future of populations.”
ning the forced laborers pressed into
service by the soldiers stationed
along the pipeline (the consortium
reportedly signed a security contract
with the Myanmar army). But the
other major issue is how to share the
wealth.
Sharing the wealth
Indeed, the contrast between the rich
energy and mineral resources located
in developing countries and the destitution
of their populations is surprising.
At a conference in 1998, BP
representatives admitted that they
were at a loss to know how to react to
a recommendation by the ERM company,
which they had hired to assess
the social impact of exploiting an oil
platform. The consulting firm suggested
that they initiate discussions with
the Angolan government concerning
its plans for distributing the oil revenues.
BP had denied for 50 years that
it had any ability to influence the
government. One participant suggested
that if all the oil groups united to
apply pressure in these kinds of situations,
they might be effective. When
an industry contacts a government to
defend its interests, it is accused of
lobbying. Would arguing in favor of a
redistribution of wealth be meddling?
In the same vein, a British NGO recently
starting campaigning in favor of a
“publish what you pay” principle,
which challenges oil companies to
make public the amount of royalties
they pay governments. For now, the
companies are invoking confidentiality
clauses. While the corporations
most committed to sustainable development
publish the amount of taxes
they pay local governments, as a barometer
of their positive impact, one can
only wonder why others choose to
keep secret something of which they
could legitimately be proud: their
financial contribution to the development
of emerging countries.
M. M.

SINGAPORE: A WHOLE-
HEARTED COMMITMENT TO
THE ENVIRONMENT
With 6,430 inhabitants per sq. km it is the second-highest population density
in the world. Renowned for its cleanliness and shops, Singapore has adopted
some of the strictest environmental regulations in the world. It is now investing
in sustainable development and applying the
‘polluter pays’ principle. Here are a few snapshots
of this city-state of 4 million people, which attracts
7.5 million tourists annually.

The national recycling
plan adopted in
2002 calls for 50% of
Singapore’s solid waste to
be recycled by 2012. Onyx is
sponsoring fun events and
educational initiatives to
raise household awareness
of the importance
of selective sorting.
Onyx has
been operating
on the island
since 1997. It employs 600
people in household and
industrial waste collection,
street cleaning, wastewater
management and hazardous
waste management.
Nine out of 10 Singaporeans live in
high-rise apartment complexes, forcing
the city to adopt an innovative
approach to waste collection. In the
most modern buildings, trash is disposed
of via chutes leading to a central
bin, which is automatically emptied by
a rear-end loader truck. Self-cleaning
devices and fire detection
make the system safe and
sanitary.

Every day of
the week, from dawn
until very late at night,
Onyx teams are busy cleaning
the streets, green spaces
and sidewalks of
downtown Singapore.
The National Environmental
Agency (NEA) is
responsible for drawing
up regulations, implementing
environmental policy
and public contracts. It requires
regular daily trash collection
and street cleaning
rounds, maximum mechanization
and extremely high
quality and safety levels,
to protect people and
the environment.
The NEA
can track, in real
time, the location of
street sweepers, their
adherence to the cleaning
schedule and their operating
speed by means of
GPS systems in every
vehicle.
REPORTAGE

Vehicles
equipped with a
powerful vacuum and
hydraulic robot arm and protected
by a rear bumper pick
up trash on the median strip of
express
lanes.
Onyx
quickly earned
ISO 14 000 and ISO
18 000 certification for
its hazardous waste
management activities,
demonstrating its determination
to meet
Singapore’s stringent
requirements and very
strict environmental
standards immediately.
The Orchard
Road district, nicknamed
the Champs Elysées,
is a shopper’s paradise. In
Boat Quay, night owls and
Sunday strollers crowd into
the bars and restaurants
on the banks of the
Singapore River.

To
meet demanding
contract goals, Onyx
has created an ambitious
training program for drivers,
loaders, operators
and managers, covering
health, safety, new
techniques, etc.
Hired by the
NEA to handle private-party
invoicing,
Onyx sub-contracts the
mailing of 115,000
invoices per
month.
Onyx innovates on a
daily basis to provide a
cleaner, greener environment.
One of its pilot projects
involves sorting and
recycling street sweeping
waste, such as gravel, sand,
leaves and twigs. It now
turns 30 tons a day into
compost or inert filling
material!

150 years of environmental progress
VE combines many years of industry
experience with a spirit of service.
Several key dates illustrate its skill at
leveraging technological innovations and
its desire to better meet community
needs.
1853
By winning a public-service franchise—
an archetypical French legal arrangement—to
distribute water to the city of
Lyon, CGE joined the ranks of private
companies helping government authorities
operate urban utilities and modernize
cities.
1875
As cities restructured and expanded, the
development of tramways—initially
horse-drawn—enabled urban residents
to get around much faster than by omnibus.
The Compagnie Générale Française
des Tramways (CGFT) played a pioneering
role outside Paris by operating the first
lines in Le Havre, Nancy and Marseille.
Re-christened CGFTE, a more diversified
version of the company transferred its
transport branch to CGEA in 1988.
1893
Aimé Bonna invented the metal-structure
pipe, which replaced cast iron with reinforced
concrete. CGE took over the
Société des Tuyaux Bonna in 1924.
1897
Georges Latil filed a patent for the front
end of a gasoline-powered automobile, to
which he later added a chassis. Latil invented
the first front-wheel drive, in 1899. His
front-end, which was adaptable for use on
horse-driven carriages, made it economical
to move from the horse into the explosion
engine era. In 1909 Charles Blum
bought Georges Latil’s industrial vehicle
construction business, then founded the
more operations-oriented CGEA in 1912.
1905
While Pasteur estimated in 1881 that 90%
of all illnesses were caused by drinking
water, Marius Paul Otto developed an
ozonization process to filter and sterilize
water. More effective than chlorine in
destroying bacteria and viruses, it did not
color the water, change its taste or leave
any residues. The world’s first water sterilization
plant using ozone was built in
Nice in 1918.
Four names in a century and a half
1853Compagnie Générale des Eaux
In keeping with Saint-Simon’s teachings, the first
directors of CGE, including Prosper Enfantin (seen
below), believe deeply in industry and its fundamental
role in improving society.
1928
CGE responded to a typhoid fever epidemic
in the suburbs of Lyon caused by bad
water by creating its own laboratory in
Saint-Clair, to guarantee the quality of the
water supply.
1935
Léon Dewailly founded Chauffage Service,
which specialized in operating heating
plants. For a flat rate he offered a comprehensive
fuel supply, operation and maintenance
service, including equipment
replacement. His company merged with
Cie Gale de Chaufffe (CGC) in 1960.
1958
CGC won the contract to provide virtually
all maintenance services, including heating,
electric power supply, water and
fluid supply, building and green space
maintenance, pickup of household waste
and so on, for American NATO bases stationed
in France. Its experience foreshadowed
Dalkia’s multiservice facilities
management contracts.
1998Vivendi
1962
CGC tries its hand at urban heating. With
the elimination of coal-fired ranges, carbon
monoxide poisoning cases gradually
disappeared.
1973
During the first oil shock, CGC innovated
to save energy, using solutions such geothermics
and wasted energy recovery.
1975
SARP Industrie, founded to recycle hazardous
waste, soon became the top
European center for the treatment of
toxic liquid waste.
1978
The first waste sorting units in Val de
Marne opened in response to the government’s
policy concerning the cleanup of
uncontrolled dumpsites. They paved the
way for selective sorting.
1983
Anjou Recherche, the first water research
center, was created. It was followed in
1990 by Eurolum, a center for transportation
research and innovation, and in 1991
by CREED, a center for environmental,
energy and waste management studies,
as Onyx stepped up its research efforts.
1992
Anjou Recherche founded GRS Valtech,
which merged with Valtech Industry in
1994 to become Onyx’s center of expertise
in pollution cleanup and industrial
facility teardown.
1994
The creation of the Institut de
l’Environnement Urbain (IEU), a continuing
education and apprenticeship center
specializing in environmental fields,
showed VE’s commitment to developing
skills and expertise.
2000
EDF brings its services business center to
Dalkia, shoring up the leadership position
of VE’s energy branch in Europe.
2001
A future trends center, called Institut VE,
was created to ponder the trends that
will influence the group’s businesses
over the next few decades.
1999Vivendi Environnement (VU environmental services)
2003Veolia Environnement

HISTORY
1853, THE YEAR IT ALL
BEGAN FOR THE VE GROUP
The origins of Veolia Environnement go back to the Second Empire, to the
creation of the Compagnie Générale des Eaux. Dedicated to the distribution
of water, CGE quickly moved into sewage management. A mere century later,
it had added waste management, urban transportation and energy services to
its business card. However, Onyx’s and Connex’s fields, which go back to the
19th century, were also part and parcel of the first industrial revolution.
As cities boomed and modernized along the Baron Haussmann model, waste
collection and water disposal and supply were making living conditions
healthier and helping to end the fevers and epidemics that ravaged communities.
Meanwhile, organized urban transportation facilitated local travel.
Here is a quick summary of a 150-year human and technological adventure.
The Compagnie Générale des Eaux
was created by an imperial decree
dated December 14, 1853, to irrigate
the countryside and supply towns
with water. It won its first contract
with Lyon and its second with Nantes.
In 1860 Paris also awarded it a franchise,
for 50 years, to supply and distribute
water. A huge market was opening
up, as city fathers eagerly embraced
the supply of drinking water
directly to urban households.
Precocious diversification and
globalisation
The company founded by Count
Simeon soon found work outside
France, landing its first contracts in
Venice, Constantinople (Istanbul) and
Porto, in 1880, 1882 and 1883 respectively.
It also expanded its services to
include wastewater treatment. Its
first customer was Boulogne-sur-mer,
in 1880.
Four main businesses
After a century of expansion in water
fields, CGE began branching out
into waste. It began collecting household
trash in 1953, started operating
incineration plants in 1967—
in partnership with the Compagnie
Générale de Chauffe (CGC)—
and created SARP Industries in
1975 to treat hazardous waste.
In 1980 it incorporated the
Compagnie Générale d’Entreprises
Automobiles
(CGEA), which specialized
in
household waste collection and
urban transportation, shoring up its
strategy and giving it a new area of
expertise. That same year CGE assumed
control of CGC. Water, waste
management, transportation and
“Flusher” and
master rag-pickers
for ancestors.
Onyx has encompassed the waste
management activities of CGEA
since 1989. Transportation is handled
by Connex. Though a young
brand, Onyx has a long history of
experience in its fields. It has inherited
the know-how of its parent company,
created in 1912, and of other
older companies. Here is a nosy
look at a few birth certificates.
1867
an entrepreneurial
approch to public health
François Grandjouan, a farmer and
transporter, was the founder of a
line of “flushers.”* Grandjouan
entered into a contract with Nantes
to pick up sewage and trash from
the streets for conversion into
manure. In earlier times farmers had
paid towns for the right to remove
night soil and use it as fertilizer.
As cities grew in size, sanitation
energy: by 1980, the basic
contours of the group’s four areas
had already taken shape. Through
Veolia Water, Onyx, Connex and
Dalkia, VE is now active in about one
hundred countries, on all continents.
became a matter of public concern
and demanded more resources. At
the same time Peruvian guano
began to compete with fertilizing
night soil. Consequently, beginning
in 1837, cities paid night soil flushers
for services rendered.
CGEA became associated with the
Grandjouan group in 1972 and
acquired almost all of it in 1989.
1870
recovery on a grand scale
Jean and Eugène Soulier set themselves
up as master rag-pickers in
Rouen and Chauny (Aisne) respectively.
The pair sold by the ton what
rag-pickers collected in the street
and then sorted: i.e., rags, paper,
leather, bone, scrap metal, etc. In
1910, Jean created an export network
to the United States and the
rest of Europe. Anticipating recycling
and recovery regulations,
CGEA assumed control of the
Soulier Group, Europe’s top salvager
of paper and plastic, in 1990.
(to be continued page 42)
41

42
1934
1900
waste management
spanish style
The Fomento de Obras y
Construcciones was founded in
Spain and specializes in public
works and city services. It joined the
group in 1998, under its new name,
Fomento de Construcciones y
Contratas (FCC). It is now the leader
in the Spanish urban waste management
market and the second-ranking
wastewater treatment firm.
1912
the spirit of collection
service
Charles Blum created CGEA to sell,
lease, repair and operate industrial
vehicles with Latil front-ends, notably
street sweepers and dump
trucks. In 1921, CGEA branched out
into household trash collection by
signing a contract with the city of
Paris.
1927
the wave of incineration
plants
The Union de Services Publics (USP)
company branched out into incineration
and energy recovery under
the steady hand of Antoine Joulot,
the inventor of the Sepia incinerator.
It later added household garbage
collection. Beginning in the sixties,
USP diversified into a number of
areas, operating crushing and composting
plants, cleaning trains, rail
stations, airplanes and airports AND
maintaining green spaces.
USP joined the Onyx Group in 1987.
In 1996, it teamed up with the
Comatec and Rénosol companies to
create Onyx’s industrial cleaning
business.
1937
pumping, pumping, pumping
The Société d’assainissement rationel
et de pompage (SARP) specialized
in sewage before diversifying
into the collection of liquid waste
and toxic effluents. It joined the
group in 1976.
1884
* from flush, clean. The term flushing was
commonly used in the west of France until the
middle 20 TH century to refer to public street
cleaning.
NEW(S)
Onyx News
China - A 20-year franchise for the
Laogang waste landfill facility in
Shanghai.
France - LNG trucks have been set out in
five Paris neighborhoods, a first in France.
Inauguration in Thaon-les-Vosges of
“TriEst,” the first totally mechanized and
automated paper sorting center in Europe,
with a capacity of 70,000 metric tons/year.
USA - A blanket contract with Whyeth, a
leading international pharmaceutical
company, to gradually take over the
management of its hazardous waste
worldwide. This will reduce Whyeth’s
exposure to environmental risks and enable
it to focus on its core business.
United Kingdom - Inauguration of the
Chineham energy recovery facility, one
of three “INTEGRA” incineration plants.
Onyx won the comprehensive, 25-year
contract for the project, which it is developing
in partnership with Hampshire
County, in 1993.
Australia - Onyx has secured authorization
to build the Sydney waste transfer
center: 400,000 metric tons of waste collected
by the city’s municipal workers will
be transferred to the ultra-modern landfill
facility of “Woodlawn,” the first bioreactor
of its size in Australia.
Brazil - In 2003 the Netherlands selected
Onyx for its project to collect/recycle biogas
at the Tremembe waste landfill center
in Brazil, under a clean development
mechanism (CDM). The operation should
prevent the emission of 700,000 metric
tons of CO 2 between 2003 and 2013.
Taiwan - Renewal for 15 years of the
contract to manage the energy recovery
plant in Tai Chung.
Poland - Opening of the country’s first
environmental waste landfill facility in
Chrzanow, Poland.
Israël - Opening of the Effeh waste
landfill facility.
Nouvelle-Calédonie - A 30-year
contract to manage a composting plant,
waste landfill facility and household
waste collection operation in Nouméa.

Calendar
june 16-18, 2004 - Third international
conference on urban renewal and sustainable
development
Sienna – Italy
Urban environments: transportation,
mobility, social exclusion, crime prevention.
www.wessex.ac.uk
june 17-18, 2004 - Education, environment
and health
Paris – France
Health issues related to access to vital
environmental services, the role of educational
programs in environmental
health, assessment of initiatives, partnerships
that should be implemented.
euroconf@pasteur.fr
septembrer 8-10, 2004 - International
symposium on the “earth system”
Istanbul – Turkey
The atmosphere, ocean and climate,
ecology and evolution, society and
environment.
www.earthsystem2004.org
octobrer 17-21, 2004 - ISWA’s exhibition
and international environmental
congress
Rome – Italy
From waste to resource management;
waste and economics in developing
countries; urban waste management
policies.
www.iswa.org
novembrer 18-20, 2004 - Second sustainable
development forum
Paris – France
The new forms of governance.
www.equitable-forum.org
Galiléo
Onyx - 38 avenue Kleber - 75116 Paris - France
Good Environmental
News
Publication Director: Rupert Schmid
Editorial Director: Solenn Mériadec
Editor-in-chief: Monik Malissard
Writing: Volodia Opritchnik, Loïc Trébord
Contributors to this issue: Francis Angotti,
Troy Blanchette, Iwona Kryzowska, Hélène Boute,
Bruno de Buzonnière, Laurent Carrabin, Thierry Chazelle,
Hubert de Chefdebien, Cyril Coillot, Gary Crawford,
Dominique Helaine, Kevin Hurst, Thierry Kazazian,
Jacques-Noël Leclercq, Jean-Paul Léglise, Thierry Lemant,
Sustainable options on the Net
MITI, Japan’s ministry of industry,
announced in late November that it
was launching the world’s biggest PLA
(product lifecycle analysis) database
on the Internet. Information will be
accessible to both companies and the
general public, to help investors and
consumers choose companies that
make “sustainable” products.
A successful food package return
center
Since being introduced a year ago, a
system for returning beverage packaging
in Denmark has achieved a recycling
rate of 81% for beer and other
beverage containers, and 90% for
glass containers.
A 60% glass recycling rate in Europe
According to the European glass packaging
association, Europe passed the
9 million metric tons collected mark for
glass in 2002 (8.8 million metric tons
in 2001). Italy and Spain are chiefly
responsible for the increase.
Air quality:
investments pay off
A report issued by the White House’s
Office of Management and Budget in
October 2003 indicates that efforts
made by American manufacturers and
households to improve air quality
saved between $120 to 193 billion on
health care spending between
October 1992 and September 2002.
Manufacturers, states and municipalities
spent between $23 and 26
billion to bring their factories and
equipment into compliance with the
new standards enacted to reduce
fine particle, sulfur dioxide and other
pollutant emissions. However,
manufacturers believe the report
underestimates the costs associated
with the regulations.
Cryogenic tire recycling
The Recipneu Company in Portugal
has developed a project to cryocrush
used tires. The tires are precut
and cooled to a temperature of - 80
degrees C using liquid nitrogen and
crushed into pellets or fine powder.
After the material’s impurities (metal
and fibrous residue) are removed,
the tires are used in place of rubber
in industrial applications and to
make surface coatings for roads and
playgrounds.
Posting of environmental
expenditures
The National Accounting Council in
France is recommending that companies
publish the amounts they spend
to repair or prevent environmental
damage in their accounts and annual
reports. The recommendation echoes
that of the European Commission
published in May 2001.
Daniel Lester, Anna Mok, Jorge Mora, Frédéric Ogé,
Oscar (throught his patience), Valérie Pasdois,
Patrick Patey, Nicolas Rambaud, Catherine Savard,
Sibylle (throught her resistance), Jean-Pierre Sicard,
Catherine de Silguy, Shantall Teman,
Jean-Sébastien Thomas, Sandra Tursi, Paul Zagami,
Laure Duquesne, Benoît de la Rochefordière.
Photography: IBAK, Photothèque Onyx; Photothèque VE;
Jean Robert; Zoom Studio; Robin Mahler.
Design: Dream On
Printing: SARL de Lorette
www.onyx-environnement.com
43