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Veolia scales up hazardous waste management in global GreenUp push

Veolia adapts its hazardous waste strategy to regional specificities, with targeted investments in Europe, North America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, combining innovation, acquisitions and infrastructure development. (Supplied)
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Updated 01 July 2025
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Veolia scales up hazardous waste management in global GreenUp push

  • French transnational to increase hazardous waste treatment capacity by 50 percent by 2030
  • New Drop technology destroys targeted PFAS up to 99.9999%, a major step forward in fight against ‘forever chemicals’
Updated 01 July 2025
Zeina Zbibo

COURRIERES: As hazardous waste becomes an emerging bottleneck in global industry, environmental services giant Veolia is taking center stage with a bold new road map. At its “Deep Dive Waste to Value” conference held in Courrieres, northern France, the company unveiled a sweeping strategy to expand hazardous waste treatment capacity by 50 percent by 2030 — a key pillar of its broader GreenUp plan to accelerate sustainable infrastructure worldwide.

The event marked a strategic repositioning, beyond the scope of a corporate update. In an age of tightening regulations, industrial transformation and health concerns tied to chemical pollutants, hazardous waste is no longer a passive liability — it is a value stream to be captured, a risk to be neutralized and a global challenge requiring scalable, science-backed solutions.




The Courrieres hazardous waste facility, one of Veolia’s flagship sites, processes about 140,000 tonnes of waste per year. (Supplied)

Veolia executives from across Europe, North America, the Middle East and the Australia–New Zealand region convened at the event, offering insights into how the company is reshaping its global hazardous waste portfolio to meet mounting environmental and regulatory demands.

From PFAS destruction technologies to global acquisitions, Veolia’s leadership outlined how the company plans to lead the next chapter in environmental security — focusing on innovation, infrastructure investment and tailored regional solutions aligned with industry needs.

From buckets of paint to PFAS: the scope of hazardous waste

Hazardous waste comes in various forms — from industrial effluents to household products like leftover paint, expired garden chemicals or solvents. The path to circularity starts not just with large-scale technology, but also with individual action. Next time you have a bucket of unused paint or expired garden products, think again before dumping it into nature — a reminder that sustainable change hinges on both systemic infrastructure and everyday choices.

At scale, Veolia aims to increase its hazardous waste treatment capacity by 530,000 tonnes, eliminate over 9 million tonnes of pollutants annually and increase revenues from this segment by 50 percent by 2030.

According to CEO Estelle Brachlianoff: “Hazardous waste treatment is becoming a strategic bottleneck for several industries. It is also an essential topic for human health and environmental security.”

Macro and micro-scale strategy

Hazardous waste is a global issue requiring both top-down and bottom-up engagement. “We need international cooperation,” Brachlianoff said, “but also change at the household level. Sustainable impact requires both.”

She identified three defining industry drivers: Pollutant removal for health, strategic industrial restructuring and supply chain resilience. “Waste is not waste anymore — it’s an untapped resource,” she added.

Veolia now treats more than 8.7 million tonnes of hazardous waste each year and reported €4.3 billion ($5 billion) in 2024 revenue from its hazardous waste segment. Its portfolio includes advanced capabilities such as strategic metal separation, battery recycling, and thermal treatment across a proprietary lab and incineration network.




Emmanuelle Menning and Estelle Brachlianoff. (Supplied)

Courrieres: Where the science happens

The Courrieres hazardous waste facility, one of Veolia’s flagship sites, processes about 140,000 tonnes of waste per year. Every load undergoes 10–20 tests, then sorting by waste family, followed by incineration or chemical treatment — a full cycle that can take as little as 10 to 45 minutes.

Due to the complexity and infrastructure requirements, treatment investments are closely tied to local waste volumes. When volumes are insufficient, waste may be transported to facilities elsewhere in Europe or beyond.

The PFAS challenge: Veolia’s new Drop Technology

One of the most significant challenges Veolia aims to tackle is PFAS — the persistent, health-risk chemicals often used in industrial and household applications. These “forever chemicals” resist breakdown due to their strong carbon-fluorine bonds and are increasingly under regulatory scrutiny.

In a major announcement, Veolia introduced Drop, its newly patented PFAS destruction technology, developed in-house and now being deployed across its 20 hazardous waste incineration lines in Europe.

Unlike traditional incineration, Drop uses a catalyst-assisted thermal process at more than 900 degrees Celsius, which not only enables destruction and removal efficiency of up to 99.9999 percent for both polymeric and non-polymeric PFAS, but also reduces corrosion and fouling in incineration systems — increasing long-term reliability.

“This is a disruptive innovation capable of eliminating targeted PFAS while preserving industrial infrastructure,” said Catherine Ricou, CEO of Veolia Hazardous Waste Europe. “We’re proud to set a European benchmark in PFAS treatment.”

Global markets and local solutions

Executives across regions presented how Veolia’s strategy is adapted to local contexts:

In Europe, Ricou highlighted four strategic pillars: Network strength, asset diversity, a granular customer base and innovation. With 20 operational sites handling waste from sectors like pharmaceuticals and households, the company is targeting 10 percent compound annual growth rate in hazardous waste EBITDA.

In North America, Bob Cappadona, president and CEO of Veolia Environmental Solutions and Services, highlighted recent acquisitions in Massachusetts and California, and the commissioning of one of the continent’s largest PFAS treatment facilities in Delaware.

From the Middle East, Helder Daravano, Veolia general manager of MAGMA, said the region is growing “twice as fast as Europe” despite being one-quarter its size. New facilities in Saudi Arabia (Tahweel) and the UAE (MAGMA) are positioning Veolia as a full-service player in the region.

In Australia and New Zealand, Matt Ead, Veolia’s national remediation services manager, detailed a shift from landfilling to pretreatment, supported by M&A activity and market-specific strategies.




Estelle Brachlianoff and Veolia executives at the "Deep Dive Waste to Value" conference in Courrières - France. (Supplied)

Scaling through GreenUp: investments and M&A

To meet rising demand, Veolia’s GreenUp program outlines both organic and acquisitive growth:

  • Five new treatment facilities are under development across the US, Europe, Middle East and Asia.
  • An additional 285,000 tonnes of capacity will be added by 2027, with a total of 430,000 tonnes by 2030.
  • $354 million in acquisitions across the US, Brazil, and Japan will contribute 100,000 tonnes of capacity.

Emmanuelle Menning, deputy CEO finance and purchasing, described the approach as a formula balancing growth, performance and capital allocation, adding that hazardous waste — particularly high-temperature incineration — remains one of Veolia’s most profitable segments.

Environmental security and strategic autonomy

“At Veolia, we are architects of environmental security. Our objective is to protect strategic autonomy,” said Brachlianoff, highlighting the company’s commitment to global agreements like the Basel Convention, ensuring waste does not get exported to less-regulated regions.

At Courrieres, which operates at 94–96 percent capacity, Veolia plans to reconfigure its boilers by 2028 to make the plant energy autonomous. The site today handles 80 percent domestic (Northern France) and 20 percent international waste, including from Italy.

Waste is no longer waste

The overarching takeaway: Hazardous waste is no longer just an environmental liability — it is a strategic resource, a public health priority and a business imperative. As Veolia aligns innovation with policy, technology and investment, it is helping set the global standard for the future of sustainable waste management.

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Iraq’s dreams of wheat independence dashed by water crisis 

Updated 16 December 2025
Reuters
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Iraq’s dreams of wheat independence dashed by water crisis 

  • Iraq ranks fifth globally for climate risk
  • Average temperatures in Iraq have risen nearly half a degree Celsius per decade since 2000
Updated 16 December 2025
Reuters

NAJAF: Iraqi wheat farmer Ma’an Al-Fatlawi has long depended on the nearby Euphrates River to feed his fields near the city of Najaf. But this year, those waters, which made the Fertile Crescent a cradle of ancient civilization 10,000 years ago, are drying up, and he sees few options.
“Drilling wells is not successful in our land, because the water is saline,” Al-Fatlawi said, as he stood by an irrigation canal near his parched fields awaiting the release of his allotted water supply.
A push by Iraq — historically among the Middle East’s biggest wheat importers — to guarantee food security by ensuring wheat production covers the country’s needs has led to three successive annual surpluses of the staple grain.
But those hard-won advances are now under threat as the driest year in modern history and record-low water levels in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers have reduced planting and could slash the harvest by up to 50 percent this season.
“Iraq is facing one of the most severe droughts that has been observed in decades,” the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s Iraq representative Salah El Hajj Hassan told Reuters.

VULNERABLE TO NATURE AND NEIGHBOURS
The crisis is laying bare Iraq’s vulnerability.
A largely desert nation, Iraq ranks fifth globally for climate risk, according to the UN’s Global Environment Outlook. Average temperatures in Iraq have risen nearly half a degree Celsius per decade since 2000 and could climb by up to 5.6 C by the end of the century compared to the period before industrialization, according to the International Energy Agency. Rainfall is projected to decline.
But Iraq is also at the mercy of its neighbors for 70 percent of its water supply. And Turkiye and Iran have been using upstream dams to take a greater share of the region’s shared resource.
The FAO says the diminishing amount of water that has trickled down to Iraq is the biggest factor behind the current crisis, which has forced Baghdad to introduce rationing.
Iraq’s water reserves have plunged from 60 billion cubic meters in 2020 to less than 4 billion today, said El Hajj Hassan, who expects wheat production this season to drop by 30 percent to 50 percent.
“Rain-fed and irrigated agriculture are directly affected nationwide,” he said.

EFFORTS TO END IMPORT DEPENDENCE UNDER THREAT
To wean the country off its dependence on imports, Iraq’s government has in recent years paid for high-yield seeds and inputs, promoted modern irrigation and desert farming to expand cultivation, and subsidised grain purchases to offer farmers more than double global wheat prices.
It is a plan that, though expensive, has boosted strategic wheat reserves to over 6 million metric tons in some seasons, overwhelming Iraq’s silo capacity. The government, which purchased around 5.1 million tons of the 2025 harvest, said in September that those reserves could meet up to a year of demand.
Others, however, including Harry Istepanian — a water expert and founder of Iraq Climate Change Center — now expect imports to rise again, putting the country at greater risk of higher food prices with knock-on effects for trade and government budgets.
“Iraq’s water and food security crisis is no longer just an environmental problem; it has immediate economic and security spillovers,” Istepanian told Reuters.
A preliminary FAO forecast anticipates wheat import needs for the 2025/26 marketing year to increase to about 2.4 million tons.
Global wheat markets are currently oversupplied, offering cheaper options, but Iraq could once again face price volatility.
Iraq’s trade ministry did not respond to a request for comment on the likelihood of increased imports.
In response to the crisis, the ministry of agriculture capped river-irrigated wheat at 1 million dunams in the 2025/26 season — half last season’s level — and mandated modern irrigation techniques including drip and sprinkler systems to replace flood irrigation through open canals, which loses water through evaporation and seepage.
A dunam is a measurement of area roughly equivalent to a quarter acre.
The ministry is allocating 3.5 million dunams in desert areas using groundwater. That too is contingent on the use of modern irrigation.
“The plan was implemented in two phases,” said Mahdi Dhamad Al-Qaisi, an adviser to the agriculture minister. “Both require modern irrigation.”
Rice cultivation, meanwhile, which is far more water-intensive than wheat, was banned nationwide.

RURAL LIVELIHOODS AT RISK
One ton of wheat production in Iraq requires about 1,100 cubic meters of water, said Ammar Abdul-Khaliq, head of the Wells and Groundwater Authority in southern Iraq. Pivoting to more dependence on wells to replace river water is risky.
“If water extraction continues without scientific study, groundwater reserves will decline,” he said.
Basra aquifers, he said, have already fallen by three to five meters.
Groundwater irrigation systems are also expensive due to the required infrastructure like sprinklers and concrete basins. That presents a further economic challenge to rural Iraqis, who make up around 30 percent of the population.
Some 170,000 people have already been displaced in rural areas due to water scarcity, the FAO’s El Hajj Hassan said.
“This is not a matter of only food security,” he said. “It’s worse when we look at it from the perspective of livelihoods.”
At his farm in Najaf, Al-Fatlawi is now experiencing that first-hand, having cut his wheat acreage to a fifth of its normal level this season and laid off all but two of his 10 workers.
“We rely on river water,” he said.

Topics: Iraq

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