Paris, September 11, 2012.
Veolia Environmental Services and ELISE sign partnership to develop office waste paper collection and recycling
Veolia Environmental Services and ELISE1 have signed a five-year commercial partnership to increase the amount of office waste paper collected and recycled in France. The goal of the partnership is to collect 50,000 metric tons of paper a year and to create 500 jobs for people with disabilities or employment difficulties.
ELISE will be responsible for collecting and sorting the office waste paper before selling it to Veolia Environmental Services. The paper will be checked and packaged by Veolia, which will then take care of trading and selling it. The company will transport the recycled raw material to industrial consumers, ensuring them a continuous supply and optimal logistics.
Using Veolia Environmental Services' existing 98 agencies, by 2015 this partnership will enable a network of social integration companies to be set up throughout France.
"ELISE's goal is first and foremost to contribute to environmental protection by recycling office waste paper. Our company is pursuing an ecological objective by collecting paper that would otherwise be destroyed. ELISE has chosen to apply the principle of a solidarity economy and expand its business through creating jobs for people who have difficulty getting into the labor market: the long-term unemployed, young people with no qualifications or people with disabilities."
"We share the same social responsibility values as Veolia Environmental Services—centering our companies' priorities on people and local services, and taking the time to train employees and help them develop their careers."
In France, the amount of uncollected office waste paper is estimated at 500,000 metric tons a year. This source is dispersed throughout companies and local government offices, so collecting it requires major logistics. The market is sustainably buoyant because the raw material produced from recycled office waste paper can be used to make printing papers, toilet paper and packaging.
"This partnership with ELISE, the pioneer and French leader in recycling office waste paper using the social and solidarity economy approach, fits perfectly with our strategy of "turning waste into a resource," because the recovered paper is turned into a raw material. The use of recycled paper in place of wood pulp enables more than 400 kg of CO2 per metric ton of paper to be avoided and reduces energy consumption by 60%. Those savings are far higher than the emissions generated by sorting and transporting the paper."
The partnership is participating in the construction of the "recycling society" and is a source of economic, environmental and social values for the companies involved.
1 ELISE: Entreprise Locale d'Initiatives au Service de l'Environnement (local enterprise for initiatives to serve the environment)