We need to start proper landfill management, says Guillaume Dourdin

Guillaume Dourdin, CEO of Veolia India, says the country's growing waste and water challenges offer vast potential for sustainable business growth and innovation

While India is now waking up to the problem of waste, propelled by increasing urbanisation, Guillaume Dourdin’s employer Veolia has been dealing with landfills for over a century. Dourdin, CEO of the Indian arm of the $24 billion waste- and water-management French utility, tells S Dinakar in a video interview how India can profit from the twin problems of excess waste and scarce water supplies. Edited excerpts:

 

How important is India for Veolia? 

Veolia has been in India for 25 years. We have defined a strategic plan for 2024-27 where we are committed to doubling the size of the company from two main businesses. One is on municipal water, the second is about industrial and hazardous waste. We have a third activity, which is water technology where we build facilities for municipalities or for industrial customers. We have built around 500 plants over the past 15 or 20 years. And we have some innovative solutions like carbon capture. 

What kind of market size are we talking about for waste treatment?

 

In terms of municipal wastewater, Indian cities treat only about 28% of the sewage generated daily, creating a large market opportunity for sewage treatment and reuse facilities. The (market for) industrial wastewater treatment alone is $2.9 billion in size, and growing at 8.3 per cent a year, with projections to reach $4.7 billion by 2030, with significant investments in effluent treatment and zero liquid discharge technologies. Another report by Moder pegs the size of municipal waste management alone at $13.5 billion in 2025, growing at 5.8 per cent annually to reach about $17.9 billion by 2030. 

How does India fit into Veolia’s global plans? 

If I look at today's India size in Veolia, it is still not a big country, but it's a country where we see a lot of potential. It's reflected in the GDP, but more than the GDP overall, the way the industry is growing, the Make-in-India positioning. And that's what we reflect in our strategic plan until 2027 – to continue to put investments in India to support our development. If I give you an example, we are today operating the entire drinking water network for Nagpur to provide 24x7 water to citizens. We are doing the same for Nangloi in Delhi. We have a manufacturing plant in Hoskote, Bengaluru, in which we manufacture membrane, chemicals that are for the Indian market, but also exported. And the Group will continue to make investments in the coming years. 

How do you think India can tackle its waste?

 

If I look at the municipal waste, I would say that one of the issues we should work on, as a country, is proper segregation of waste. Today, one of the difficulties that we have is that you receive a kind of mixed waste that is very difficult to valorize because everything is mixed. We need to address proper management of landfills. If you have waste-to-energy plants that are working with a better waste mix that generates more energy, less breakdown, because it's properly segregated, it will contribute to reducing the amount of final waste to be disposed of. If I look at industrial waste, we need to be focused on solutions where we can reuse some of those materials and not consider incineration or landfilling as the final solution. There is a lot of energy in the waste that can be reconverted to energy. 

What do you do with all the legacy waste, especially in a city like Delhi? 

About legacy waste, it will probably take decades to deal with the amount of waste that has been accumulated, and I would say it is improperly managed. We need to start to build a proper infrastructure to manage the waste, which will be able to treat the flow, which is the actual waste, and to treat part of the stock, which is a legacy. We have the same issue for industrial waste. 

Waste-to-energy becoming popular but also causing community protests. Do you think such projects are advisable for India?

 

Waste-to-energy is part of the solution. To have a strong and robust waste-to-energy system, the plants need to be operated properly. We need professional operators. If we look at today's projects, I would say the efficiency is relatively low, and it's linked to the fact that operation is not professional enough. Segregation of the waste is not good enough. We basically try to burn a lot of things that are not supposed to be burned. And finally, air treatment is very critical and important. One of the issues is how do we enforce and how do we make sure the air treatment at the outlet of those plants is done properly so that we don't add up to the pollution, but we actually help to resolve the issue. 

The controversy is natural. Nobody wants to have a waste treatment plant, whether it's waste to energy or landfill, in his backyard. But if we are able to demonstrate that this can be done with respecting the environment with the highest level of safety, I think this could be part of the answer to our broader issue.   

Are India’s pollution control measures on par with those in western nations? 

The regulation in India is of a good level. But it's really the enforcement in every place that needs to be strengthened. And again, the framework exists. The pollution control boards are there. Their control is tight. It’s just a matter of becoming more stringent.