How Veolia North America Manages Risk When Treating Hazardous Waste
Veolia North America Sustainability Report 2024
Managing, mitigating and preventing the risks of hazardous materials are areas of our deep expertise. As a company originally established to meet environmental challenges, we strive to not just meet requirements, but ensure that we are doing as much as possible to treat air, water and solid waste pollution; remove it from the environment; and whenever possible, regenerate it as a useful resource.
PROTECTING PUBLIC HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT
We seek to meet and exceed all regulatory requirements for environmental performance through our robust environmental management system. The system, which is deployed across our operating sites, ensures a holistic approach to environmental management and documentation. It is closely aligned with the ISO14001 environmental management standards. In fact, six of our North America sites are also ISO14001-certified. The core tenets of our environmental management system are:
- Policies and procedures
- Implementation plans and resourcing
- Training and development
- Auditing and corrective action
- Regular management review
A core focus for the year 2023 was harmonizing the environmental auditing program across the region. Over 60 qualified environmental, health and safety auditors in North America continually assess and recommend improvements to the region’s environmental performance.
Another important part of the company’s environmental system is the management and corrective action for high-risk incidents. The company’s management system emphasizes the importance of reporting and learning from potential incidents, as well as active incidents, using the Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA) methodology.
During 2023, 91% of level 3 incidents and high potential near misses were analyzed with RCFAs, and corrective action recommendations were communicated across the region.
Learning from actual incidents and near-misses can help to identify hazards, improve procedures and prevent similar incidents from occurring at other sites.
