Sustainabilty Matters asks SUEZ environnement’s Executive Director Infrastructure Emmanuel Vivant* about the company’s role in the ‘resource revolution’ in Australia and more.
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hat has triggered your
From waste to resource recovery — Q&A with Emmanuel Vivant
newly formed company, SUEZ environnement, to focus on the ‘resource revolution’? Our world’s natural
resources are limited. Ultimately, we need to abandon the linear model of consumption from cradle to grave and move towards the circular economy where recycling and re-use become the norm. We believe SUEZ environnement has a significant role to play in leading this revolution. Our customers want smarter solutions to meet their waste needs, and globally SUEZ environnement is prepared to lead, to innovate and to invest in solutions that can continue to transform waste into new resources and energy. For us in Australia, we have also recently brought our water and waste divisions together under the one brand and management team. This enables us to provide our customers with access to a fully integrated waste and water group offering a larger panel of solutions and expertise. What technology trends do you predict will help promote the resource revolution and improve the efficiency of recovering resources from waste in Australia? The resource revolution can be seen as a new era in waste management by improving the recovery rate of resources from waste, particularly in Australia. I believe the future of waste management locally, besides material recovery already in train, will be around energy across multiple facets: alternative fuels, dedicated small-scale cogeneration (steam and electricity) plants, large-scale energy-from-waste (EfW) and anaerobic digestion. While these are not necessarily new and innovative, they will see the introduction of new technologies in our market. We have already significantly invested in resource recovery infrastructure in 8 This issue is sponsored by — Schneider Electric — http://www.schneider-electric.com.au/sites/australia/en/products-services/product-launch/smart-panels/smart-panels.page