Our environment policy
For the past several years, environment-related challenges have been a major issue at Eurovia as the Company strives to apply sustainable development principles to all of its activities. Environmental protection is also a major concern for all of the Company's clients and all other stakeholders in all countries where it operates.
Our environment policy, established in 2008, has allowed us to define our vision with respect to environmental responsibility. It provides a formal framework for our commitment and showcases our determination as a company to achieve progress in this area. The policy focuses on a three-pronged approach: design and develop techniques and provide increasingly environmentally friendly services; control the impact of our activities on the environment; and promote environmental value.
Recycling, minimizing our CO2 footprint, reducing energy consumption, and preserving natural resources are already part of initiatives Eurovia undertakes to lessen the impact of its activities. Targeted deadlines and results help the Company chart its progress with accuracy. Eurovia is committed to producing 10% of its total production of aggregates from recycled excavation materials by the end of 2010 as well as 10% of its total asphalt production from recycled aggregates by the end of 2012.
Eurovia is active on several fronts in the fight against climate change. Eurovia's target for energy-consumption and greenhouse gas emission reductions with respect to warm-mix production across the Company as a whole by the end of 2010 is 600,000 tonnes.
This initiative is also designed to improve Eurovia buildings' energy performance. Various employees training and awareness programs are under way, including environment-related sessions for new hires, brief quarterly presentations on environmental issues, and others.
Eco-effectiveness is yet another area where the Company is mobilizing support and making progress. Eco-effectiveness is dependent on appropriate eco-design - in other words, a product's entire life cycle must be assessed right from the design phase. Product development must include an analysis of its environmental impact and a plan for integrating environmentally friendly features throughout its life cycle. Eurovia developed an eco-software application, GAIA.BE®, which assesses its worksites' environmental impact. This approach meets the increasingly important client requirement of environmental awareness and protection. The Company has decided to train all of its heavy-vehicle drivers and machinery operators in eco-driving techniques before the end of 2010.
Eurovia's environmental management team, which reports to top management, monitors our environmental policy's deployment at all of the Company's entities. It calls on a network of 50 Quality, Safety, and Environment delegates who are assisted by a staff of approximately 100 people. This structure favours the sharing of experience and allows all groups to benefit from tangible expertise. It is designed to enable Eurovia to reach a standard (minimum) level of environmental performance in all countries where the Company is present.
The construction of infrastructure, production and recycling of materials, and maintenance of networks are activities associated with considerable constraints. Our projects involve numerous stakeholders with diverging concerns and expectations, including clients, elected officials in local communities, public authorities, suppliers, subcontractors, employees and unions, local residents, associations, and users and future users of the infrastructure we build.
Eurovia has elected to engage in dialogue with its various audiences and wishes to consolidate these ties in all countries where we operate. Our objective? To limit nuisances due to worksites, ensure safety at worksites, and preserve the environment. Feasibility study personnel meet with users to understand their requirements and determine client-related constraints.
Prior to each project, numerous parameters are taken into consideration, including sound and visual nuisances, pollution, pedestrian traffic, automobile traffic, managing the deployment and movement of heavy machinery and trucks on site.
All of this is done to ensure that our worksites are deployed with minimal impact to local surroundings and economic activity. In this regard, we comply with pinpoint specifications. The Company organizes local consultation and monitoring commissions. Economic and social partners are consulted at each phase in our operations. For the past several years, Eurovia has promoted biodiversity in its quarries. We build ties with communities and associations dedicated to environmental protection, notably, during the site redevelopment planning phase when projects are still under way or nearing completion. In addition, operators on site rely on their own initiative: they adapt their practices to the environment to minimize disturbances and favour the continued presence of wildlife and vegetation in their quarries.
At Eurovia, our research, development and innovation (RD&I) program - one of the Company's strategic pillars - is dedicated to sustainable development, preserving the environment, enhancing infrastructural safety, and ensuring the sustainability in the Company's top three research areas. As much as 70% of the RD&I budget (a total of €10 million in 2009), is devoted to implementing technologies and solutions that add genuine environmental value. The products, techniques and solutions created at the Mérignac research centre (in the Gironde region of France) are rapidly implemented in the field. In 2009, that was the case for several environmentally friendly solutions, including the second generation of the Tempera® range of warm-mix products, Viaphone®, an asphalt paving solution that reduces noise pollution for local residents and users, and NOxer®, a surface dressing that uses the process of photocatalysis to eliminate 10 to 40% of polluting exhaust gases.
Eurovia also shares its technologies and solutions with all entities in the VINCI Group.
Just like its parent company, Eurovia prioritizes participatory innovation. The Company favours the use of feedback to disseminate best practices across its operations. Sharing good ideas is part of Eurovia's culture. That is why the Company has created its Feedback Awards in which employees vote to recognize the most useful innovations (new processes, bright ideas, breakthrough tools, etc.). Entries in the running for the Feedback Awards also qualify for the VINCI Innovation Awards, which recognize products and methods that contribute to the dissemination and promotion of expertise in all of the Group's areas of activity.
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Wildlife and vegetation populating our quarries
Quarries are not just material-extraction sites - they are also wonderful shelters for various kinds of wildlife and vegetation. At Peyrolles-en-Provence in the Bouches-du-Rhône region, the transformation of the Quatre tours gravel pit into an eco-friendly wetland goes back to 1980. Other experiments have followed.
Five years ago, inspired by the above example, Durance Granulats installed a reed bed, mudflats, and a wetland at Ballastière des Chapeliers near a zone under development, thereby attracting specific species of wildlife and vegetation. Once extraction operations are terminated, the area will be managed by a group of associations that participated in the developing the project.
Eurovia provides eco-driving training
Eurovia's program to reduce energy consumption also relies on providing training on new driving techniques. Realizing that fully one-third of its greenhouse gas emissions came from trucks, the Company decided to provide its drivers with eco-driving training. The training includes both theory and a practical component and consists of two half-day modules; it has been rolled out to 2,000 employees. The training program is also being offered at coating plants and will also be provided to coating unit operators.
GAÏA.BE®: the eco-gauging tool
Gaïa.BE®, which was developed by researchers and operations personnel using product lifecycle analysis, models the environmental impact of each phase in the implementation of worksites, including all the stages of roadwork, quarry extraction, and road surface compaction.
It provides results that take local characteristics and constraints into consideration.
Relevant criteria are selected from the worksite's environmental profile included in Gaïa.BE's environmental indicators: natural resource and energy consumption, polluting emissions, waste production, and preserving the quality of life of residents. Its reference system was established using recognized and public data produced by the roadwork industry in line with current international standards. With this tool, Eurovia promotes environmentally friendly solutions that contribute to the preservation of natural resources, help mitigate climate change, and protect people.
Gradius® calculates optimal paving temperature
Calculating the optimal temperature settings for asphalt paving - which is in opposition to the "the hotter, the better" mindset - helps ensure an optimal amount of paving material and prevent unnecessary heating, thereby reducing atmospheric emissions.
Thanks to its ease of access and use, Gradius® allows roadwork companies to adapt to specific worksite conditions (weather, transport, etc.
) to achieve the best quality/environmental protection trade-off. The design of Gradius® is based on pavement-cooling calculations; as a result, it also provides traffic-worthiness time estimates - valuable information required for optimal scheduling at worksites in urban settings.
