A good neighbour

Employee volunteering

We demonstrate our commitment to being 'a good neighbour' by encouraging all our employees to enjoy a paid half-day each year giving something back to their community. At the beginning of 2010, we set ourselves the target of encouraging 5% of our 12,000 staff to use their half-day. At the end of the year, 7.3% of our staff had volunteered 3,600 hours – or 450 days – to local good causes.

Activities ranged from a Tower Hamlets team helping out at Mudchute City Farm to a team from Southwark lending their time to Pilgrims' Way Primary School, creating a new relaxation garden and installing a new shed for school equipment. Employees in Hampshire helped to clean up Portsmouth beaches, while staff in Durham spent their allowance wrapping Christmas presents for Mencap members.

A team of 20 from the Portsmouth commercial business team marked the first week of a 10-year restoration plan to restore 30 acres of Marwell Wildlife’s woodland to its former glory. In East Sussex, our team of volunteers brightened up the walls of the Searchlight Residential Care Home to help it achieve a new look with a ‘Nautical’ themed day centre.

One of our employees at Brownhills provides a home for guide-dog puppies until they are old enough for training. With the help of a supplier, they were able to clean and tidy the grounds in which the young guide dogs live.

Our HR team did their bit, too, volunteering at the Sir Thomas Abney School, Hackney, where they helped clean out the school pond, before weeding and preparing the garden area for new planting to take place.

Our Hazardous Waste Services team in Ellesmere Port created gardens at nearby Ellesmere Port Station, helping it to receive the 'Cheshire's Best Kept Station' award.

70 employees from our Finance team took part in a litter picking activity along the promenade at Blackpool, while our Birmingham team announced the launch of a new Community Promise Initiative – a contract-wide pledge that sees staff using their volunteering time to work collectively on community work across the city.

The Veolia Essex Trusts

The Veolia Essex Trusts consist of the Pitsea Marshes Trust, the Havering Riverside Trust and
the Mardyke Trust.

Pitsea Marshes Trust

Project: Development and construction of Basildon Sports Village – £500,000

Basildon Sports Village is part of a major regeneration project designed to create great sporting as well as art, health and educational facilities. The new building is built to BREEAM 'very good' standards, which includes sustainable design elements such as combined heat and power, rainwater harvesting, low-energy lighting, solar thermal panels and natural ventilation.  

Havering Riverside Trust

Project: Creating a Green Gateway between Rainham Village and the marshes – £480,000

The Wildspace regeneration project aims to restore the links between the Rainham Village Community, the Thames Marshes and the River Thames. The access to this regional visitor destination – known as the Rainham Gateway –
is 23.4 hectares and is a designated local nature reserve.

Mardyke Trust

Project: Veolia Mardyke Bridge – £250,000

This 21-tonne steel bridge links Purfleet to the RSPB’s major reserve at Rainham, and is a critical link in the national long-distance cycle network along the bank of the River Thames in Essex.

We welcome applications from community groups and organisations for projects to provide or improve their local heritage, environment or community spaces. 

Community liaison

We believe that the key to maintaining community responsibility is to keep the lines of communication open. Further to this, we run liaison committees at many of our facilities, where residents and interested parties near our facilities can meet with us to voice any concerns and receive information on our activities. Face to face, we can deal with local issues rapidly and reassure individual communities.

For both the Highmoor landfill site and the two South Buckinghamshire landfill sites, we set up a telephone helpline, enquiries email address and a website that local residents could visit. We understand public perceptions of landfill sites and we want to be a good neighbour by working with communities, being open and honest. While it is hard to change perceptions, we can try and improve them. The number of complaints at the three sites has dropped; our biggest critics have stated that they have noticed a big difference in how we are operating and are pleased with how we are communicating with them. The improved perceptions about the sites are due to the improved management processes in place, as well as the fact that residents now feel informed and able to get in touch if they have a problem to discuss.

The presence of the website and telephone helpline number has really helped to open up communications channels with the local community.

Community engagement with Old Kent Road

At Veolia, we take a positive position on community engagement, to better our services and our relationships with councils and local people.

With the building of a new Integrated Waste Management Facility (IWMF) at the Old Kent Road in Southwark, we wanted to ensure that local residents were aware of up-and-coming developments. A Community Liaison Group was formed and a series of meetings was held to ensure that residents could find out more about activities in their area and express their views. The meetings covered a variety of issues of importance to local residents, from jobs and on-site apprenticeships to environmental management and education. The meetings received an average satisfaction rating of 70%. Further to the meetings, newsletters were distributed to 3,000 properties surrounding the site and an exhibition showcasing the plans for the education and visitor centre was also held.

Working with schools

 

We are dedicated to helping schools develop programmes focused on the environment, and so working with schools across the UK is an important part of our business.

Bringing recycling to students

Students at Matlock Bath Infant and Junior School turned up one morning to find a giant Veolia truck had taken over their school car park. Damian Bigley, Contract Manager, and Peter Dyer, Supervisor for our Derbyshire Dales contract, were visiting the school to teach five- to seven-year-olds the importance of recycling. The children also had the opportunity to explore the 26-tonne split-bodied recycling truck.

Merseyside Schools Waste Education programme

In partnership with Merseyside Waste Disposal Authority, this education programme provides schools with learning resources that allow students to develop knowledge in sustainability, recycling and waste management, as well as to tour our Materials Recovery Facilities.

Our educational programmes and visits to both primary and secondary schools provide a range of 'Learning Outside of the Classroom' opportunities through play, as well as programmes developed in line with the National Curriculum and Key Stages themes. We also enable visitors to see recycling and recovery in action, explore our smarter shopping zone and creepy compost corner, play giant recycling games and a whole host of other hands-on activities.

Our dedicated teams visits primary and secondary schools and young people’s groups across the country, delivering a variety of educational programmes for all ages.