On this spring morning, bad weather is putting English rail traffic to the test. But, despite the cascade of train cancellations, Sabrina Soussan, the CEO of Suez, displays a very British phlegm. It must be said that the latest news is good: the Manchester metropolitan area has just extended by eight years the contracts that bind it until 2026 with the French group. This will manage the waste of the city and its surroundings until 2034. A financial windfall estimated at more than a billion pounds. Enough to put a little further away the bad memory of the takeover bid launched by Veolia in 2021, which resulted in a significant shrinking of the group?
On the Manchester Metropolitan Community (GMCA) website, an evaluation report dated December 15, 2023 highlights the constant progress made by the “new Suez” during the recent period. “Since signing contracts in 2019, we have seen recycling rates improve, making our city region one of the best performing in the country. We are on track to have less than 1% of the waste we process be landfilled,” said a spokesperson.
If Manchester is so enthusiastic about the French giant, it is not only for its capacity to efficiently absorb 1.1 million tonnes of rubbish per year. It is also because of its social impact. “More and more, our clients are choosing their service provider on the basis of new criteria whose aim is to create social value,” confirms Sabrina Soussan. In the case of Manchester, these requests accounted for 15% of the final evaluation of the companies responding to the call for tenders. To win the contract, Suez racked its brains. How has the group differentiated itself from its competitors? By creating a center, unique in Europe, allowing hundreds of thousands of discarded objects to be recovered and brought back to life.
A Stratocaster guitar for 75 pounds
As large as a football field, this 5,000 square meter hangar located in an industrial district of the city opened in 2021. Daniel Carolan, GMCA contract director, shows the premises. Behind him, fifteen days of waste from around twenty collection centers are waiting to be processed by the site’s employees: bicycles, cat food, golf clubs, furniture, televisions… “All these items will be repaired, cleaned, renovated and resold on the Internet or in one of the three stores in the region It’s incredible to see the quantity of objects in good condition destined to end their lives in the recycling center. not receiving enough, but today we collect more than we can process,” continues Daniel Carolan.
On the right side of the warehouse, the repaired objects are stacked on shelves. They won’t stay there long given their price: Dyson vacuum cleaner at 35 pounds, Stratocaster guitar at 75 pounds. “In general, the products are offered at half the new price. This allows people with few resources to benefit from them. But the discounts can be even more advantageous,” confides an employee. As for the revenue from sales – more than a million pounds to date – they largely finance charitable associations.
“Some take care of the homeless. But we have many other ways of serving the community. For example, our center trains apprentices and volunteers in repair techniques. We go to schools to raise awareness among younger people to good waste management We have even entered into a partnership with certain prisons. Thanks to one of them, we are rehabilitating medical equipment used in hospitals with results that are as unexpected as they are spectacular: the prisoners. participating in this program see their rate of relapse into delinquency decrease significantly,” explains John Scanlon, managing director of Suez recycling & recovery for the United Kingdom.
In the 21st century, all these initiatives are monitored and measured using a sophisticated algorithm. “Every hour of training, the tons of waste processed, the consumption of materials avoided thanks to the repair…, everything is taken into account rigorously in the program. Thus, in 2022 we know that we have created exactly 366,721 673 pounds of social value, with a return on investment of 3.55 In other words, for every pound invested in our actions, we generated more than three times that for the community, in the form of economic, environmental or societal gain. “, explains Karen Thompson, head of partnerships and engagement at Suez for the GMCA contract. Convinced of the effectiveness of these initiatives, the French group is now targeting 3 billion in social value for 2030 in the country. An objective in line with the dynamism of the British market.
Increasingly widespread practices
“It is no coincidence that these practices are so advanced in the United Kingdom. Here, citizens have the charity in the genes. They are always raising funds for a charitable organization,” notes Sabrina Soussan. However, France is not left out. Laurent-Guillaume Guerra, director of human resources at Suez, confirms: “Our customers French people also want to create impact. It’s no longer just about financing associations, like twenty years ago.” Thus, at the request of Bordeaux town hall, Suez has been integrating people far from employment into small collection activities since the 2000s. cardboard boxes or cigarette butts, which are then processed in the factory.
In Montauban, where the town hall wants to significantly reduce the quantities of waste in the coming years, the group has invested in a recycling center, a repair center and a start-up specializing in the circular economy. Enough to support 45 jobs. “The center that we built in Manchester remains unique because of its size and its social ramifications. But we are developing, on a smaller scale, this type of initiative in around fifteen French cities. We can thus manage the last mile collection, while developing reintegration practices Everyone is a winner”, explains Laurent-Guillaume Guerra. “These initiatives lend themselves well to waste professions. But we are starting to see them also arrive in the water sector, Suez’s other branch of activity,” adds Sabrina Soussan. A unique know-how, which should once again hit the mark during future calls for tenders.
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