22 March 2024

Water sobriety: Séché Environnement’s strategy for saving water

Speichim Processing Beaufort Trédi Saint Vulbas Triadis Services Étampes Seche Group Pérou Trédi waste-to-energy plant - Salaise-sur-Sanne Industrial water treatment Water

Julie Angeletti is the project manager in charge of implementing this plan. She explains the process, with examples to back it up!

How did Séché Environnement’s water efficiency plan come about?

In recent years, the issue of water scarcity has become even more serious both in France and around the world. Droughts are becoming increasingly frequent. They represent a threat not only to ecosystems, but also to our business. Faced with the challenge of global warming, it is essential that we speed up our ecological transition. That’s why, as an industrial player committed to protecting the environment, the Group has set up an ambitious action plan to preserve water resources and meet the target set by the government: to reduce water withdrawals by 10% by 2025.

We began by analyzing our facilities’ water consumption patterns, based on our Non-Financial Performance Report (NFPR). This document, which we publish every year, compiles a range of data on each of our sites. In particular, it shows the quantities of water withdrawn, discharged or recycled.

And what did you find?

First of all, there were major disparities between the 40 sites we studied worldwide. Just a handful of sites were responsible for the majority of our overall consumption (around 3 million cubic meters). In some of these facilities, energy produced via waste recovery is used to supply hot water or steam to industrial or urban heating networks. Though the water circulates in a nearly closed circuit, significant top-ups are still required. Flue gas cleaning systems, which are essential to protect the environment, can also involve water consumption. As for the other sites, they use water for various purposes: cooling production processes, cleaning facilities, auxiliary uses, etc. Some of these sites were already quite far along in their water-saving initiatives.

In specific terms, how are you going to reduce water consumption?

Last year, we began to increase and improve the number of water meters on our installations – not only at entry and exit points, but to analyze the primary uses of water. This has allowed us to detect and correct various leaks and instances of excess consumption.

Improving the information we have at our disposal will also allow us to more precisely identify potential areas for water savings, and, for example, where we could use water from our industrial processes (reuse) or rainwater rather than groundwater or water taken from drinking water mains. The more precise our indicators, the more effective solutions we can devise to reduce withdrawals.

We are also working on improving the operation of our machinery and processes, and even replacing them with more water-efficient equipment.

For all this, we rely heavily on our on-site employees, who know their facilities inside out. Together, we’ve already completed a number of projects, with more to come.

Can you give us some examples?

There are many, and the Group has already reduced its withdrawals by 6.4% between 2021 and 2023 (at constant scope), but here are our most notable recent and ongoing projects.

At Trédi Salaise

We have significantly reduced the water consumption of flue gas cleaning towers by reorganizing their water supply. Some are now fed in succession rather than in parallel, so that each tower feeds the next with its wastewater.

At Trédi Saint-Vulbas

We replaced four hydraulic seal pumps. Each consumed almost 1m3 of water per hour just to remain watertight. The new magnetic pumps, on the other hand, consume no water at all.

At Triadis Services Étampes

Our hazardous waste sorting and consolidation platform has swapped mains water for rainwater for its cleaning operations, which should lead to a significant reduction in water consumption. The water treatment system was partly financed by the local Water Agency (Agence de l’Eau).

At Speichim Processing Beaufort

Rainwater will soon replace drinking water in the cooling towers used to regenerate used solvents. They account for 90% of the plant’s total water consumption.

At Séché Eco Industries Changé

We plan to recover water from the treatment of leachate (the effluent recovered and treated at the outlet of a household waste storage cell) for other industrial uses. With additional treatment, this water could eventually be reused in our industrial processes. A feasibility study is underway, but we can expect savings of 5,000 to 10,000 m3 of water per year.

At Ecocentro Chilca, Peru

The site has reduced its water consumption by 30%, thanks in particular to the construction of a new storage tank, eliminating the need to use the old network.

At the Villa and Salvador thermal treatment center in Peru

Container cleaning accounted for a very large proportion of the drinking water consumed on site. We have installed more modern equipment that uses much less water. The result: a reduction of almost 50% in the site’s water consumption.

The problems are as varied as the solutions we can imagine…

Yes, but Séché has a great deal of expertise in industrial water treatment and can rise to the challenge. The diversity of situations implemented at our many sites, combined with our in-depth knowledge of companies’ needs, also enables us to offer our industrial partners appropriate, sustainable solutions.