Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Veolia's DiCroce on Getting Ahead of 'Sustainable' Curve(Audio)

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Veolia's DiCroce on Getting Ahead of 'Sustainable' Curve(Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: from the First Baking newsdask on Bill Maloney, Charlie, all right,
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  Speaker 1: thank you very much, Bill, and to hear live breaking
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  Speaker 1: news over your Bloomberg Times squawk. Ask you a w
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  Speaker 1: K on your terminal. I'm Charlie Pelos. That's a Bloomberg
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  Speaker 1: business flash. You're listening to taking stock with Pim Box
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  Speaker 1: and Kathleen Hayes on Bloomberg Radio. Water we all take
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  Speaker 1: it for granted, but it seems to be the one
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  Speaker 1: commodity that is immune to the factor of supply and demand.
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  Speaker 1: Here to tell us how water factors into so many
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  Speaker 1: aspects of our life and business is built a crow Check.
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  Speaker 1: He is the president and the chief executive of Veolia
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  Speaker 1: North America. Bill, thank you very much for coming into
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  Speaker 1: the studio. My pleasure. Now just tell people a little
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  Speaker 1: bit about the Volia. It is a French company, you're
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  Speaker 1: the head of the North American business, and you're moving
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  Speaker 1: the headquarters of the company from Chicago to Boston home
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  Speaker 1: to Bloomberg. Tell us about the company and the move. Sure, so, Violis,
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  Speaker 1: it's a it's a Paris based company, but we're an
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  Speaker 1: international company. Um long history and water goes back a
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  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years as a French water utility. Over
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  Speaker 1: the last fifteen years though, from that long history of
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  Speaker 1: being a Western European water company, we really moved into
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  Speaker 1: a position to be the world's largest all environmental firm
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  Speaker 1: and we focus on water, energy, and waste basically around
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  Speaker 1: resource resource management it on all those fronts. Um and
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  Speaker 1: fundamental to that premise is what we call the circular economy,
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  Speaker 1: which is trying to take people from a mental people, businesses,
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  Speaker 1: cities away from a mentality of buy use, throw away
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  Speaker 1: to buy use, reuse, repurpose and then maybe as much
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  Speaker 1: as little waste as possible. So really it's it's taking
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  Speaker 1: it from a linear thought process to a circular thought process.
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  Speaker 1: So what do you sell them, the people that you
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  Speaker 1: want to go circular, what do you sell them? We
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  Speaker 1: we sell them services generally, So give for you for
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  Speaker 1: an example. This is outside of it. It stretches across
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  Speaker 1: water ennygy ways. But I'll give an example in water.
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  Speaker 1: So we're building a plant right now in Marcellus shale
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  Speaker 1: field where um we will take the water that comes
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  Speaker 1: out after a frack. We will treat it so that
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  Speaker 1: it can be either reused for the next round of
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  Speaker 1: FRACKINGE or it can be discharged in environmentally safe manner.
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  Speaker 1: So that's a case where it's it's a circular reuse
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  Speaker 1: type of situation. In other cases, in refineries, we take
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  Speaker 1: oily residuals where there's water and oil and other solids
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  Speaker 1: mixed into part of a refinery process. We purify that,
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  Speaker 1: will recycle the water, send it back to the refinery
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  Speaker 1: or will send it back to their own treatment system,
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  Speaker 1: will take out the oily components, give them the oil
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  Speaker 1: back so they can put it back into the refinery process.
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  Speaker 1: And then finally the solids that are left over, we
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  Speaker 1: reinject into what's called the coker, which is it's a
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  Speaker 1: way to actually combust it within the refining process, so
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  Speaker 1: the waste streams are minimized, reus is maximized. It's a
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  Speaker 1: bottom line benefit, and it's a reduced environmental footprint for
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  Speaker 1: the refinery. So those are a couple of examples. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I started when I introduced to you by describing water
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  Speaker 1: as a commodity where supply and demand don't necessarily have
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  Speaker 1: any effect on the price. Tell us about this. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: it's one of the big challenges of dealing with water
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  Speaker 1: scarcity and water resource management. Water is substantially underpriced, and
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  Speaker 1: you know, it's a touchy issue because many folks believe
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  Speaker 1: that it's a right as as a citizen of planet
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  Speaker 1: Earth to have access to water. In reality, there's this
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  Speaker 1: filla cost, whether it's through scarcity or just normal um
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  Speaker 1: the cost of moving water around. So, for example, in California,
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  Speaker 1: where's a scarcity issue, we still price water in a
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  Speaker 1: very cheap fashion where people can overuse and there's really
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  Speaker 1: no economic pinch. So there's a dissociation between the price
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  Speaker 1: of water and it's fundamental cost of delivery and the
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  Speaker 1: notion of scarcity. How much has the consciousness of businesses changed?
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  Speaker 1: Is it dutiful now? Like oh, yeah, I guess you'd
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  Speaker 1: better got on board with this. It's getting a lot
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  Speaker 1: more popular. Is there some sense of it being their duty?
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  Speaker 1: Is there some sense of it being a good business
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  Speaker 1: strategy in terms of cost over the longer haul? Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: I think when you when you look at this notion
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  Speaker 1: again of circular economy and sustainable development, it's come a
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  Speaker 1: long way. If you go back, you know, ten fifteen years,
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  Speaker 1: it was looked out maybe maybe a little further, called
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  Speaker 1: them tree huggers. It progressed into a phase where there
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  Speaker 1: were new technologies, there was a new wonder standing, but
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  Speaker 1: people were still applying green plaint in other words, a
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  Speaker 1: facade that looked sustainable, not but not really into the
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  Speaker 1: core of business processes. Today, what you see our businesses
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  Speaker 1: either for the reason of satisfying both greens as I
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  Speaker 1: call it, economics and environmental reasons. There's an underpinning for
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  Speaker 1: for investment. So uh, for those examples that I just gave,
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  Speaker 1: not only is there cleaner environmental footprint for the industry,
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  Speaker 1: but their bottom line competitive improves. So that's just one
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  Speaker 1: fundamental reason. Now that takes complexity, fully understanding value chains
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  Speaker 1: and supply chains and really digging into processes and doing
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  Speaker 1: them different differently and making investments. But companies are doing that.
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  Speaker 1: I think the other thing worthy of note is companies
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  Speaker 1: are also looking at this as a hedge. So for example,
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  Speaker 1: you're at the forefront of something like organics to energy.
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  Speaker 1: We know we waste too much food. We know it
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  Speaker 1: was into landfills that creates methane, which is basically c
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  Speaker 1: O two on steroids. When it comes to the to
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  Speaker 1: the global impact, to the climate impact. Yet, although there's
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  Speaker 1: many laws that limit the UH basically the disposal of
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  Speaker 1: organics to landfills, there's not much enforcement yet. But companies
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  Speaker 1: are understanding that they need to get ahead of the curve.
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  Speaker 1: So you see some of the big food companies, the
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  Speaker 1: high end um grocery store chains, other big box companies
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  Speaker 1: that move a lot of food. They're getting out in
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  Speaker 1: front of it. Bill the Crouchy, thank you so very much.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you for getting out in front of our radio
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  Speaker 1: audience here this afternoon on taking Stock. Fiells, President CEO
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