Transformative innovations: an eye on the future

In France, on average around 20% of treated water is lost before it reaches the user's meter, with a further 8% leaking after the meter. To combat these leaks, for many years SUEZ has used people and manual processes and equipment to detect them, such as leak detectors, flow meters, acoustic sensors and remote meter reading. But it is the advent of digital technology and artificial intelligence (AI) that really makes these tools powerful.

By analysing data on a massive scale and making it easier to process, AQUADVANCED®, our software suite, generates more relevant alerts and targets interventions at the right time, in the right place, making leakage control more effective without increasing the cost to the customer. SUEZ is also able to create virtual models of networks, also known as digital twins, and thus develop the effectiveness of detection and prediction algorithms. This approach means that ambitious targets can be set for reducing water abstraction, like in Brive, where SUEZ has made a commitment to reduce abstraction by 21%.

Between 20% and 30% of waste collected is incorrectly sorted on its arrival at the sorting plant. In the aim of precisely identifying and sorting materials, SUEZ has developed Autodiag^®, an arch fitted with a camera, installed over the sorting table. Used to measure the quality of waste sorting in real time, this smart solution is based on algorithms that have been fed with labelled images of the different types of waste. What are the benefits? It can automatically qualify the mass purity of outgoing flows for baling and the uniformity of the different qualities of materials produced. Autodiag^® is now operational for plastic waste, with a success rate of around 98.5% in detecting incorrectly sorted waste, and will soon be operational for wastepaper, cardboard and plastic film.

In energy-from-waste (EfW) plants, a quarter of the feeders had potentially recoverable materials, while 8.5% had undesirable materials that could disrupt or even damage the process. QUALIWASTE^® is part of a programme launched by SUEZ in 2022 to exploit the potential of computer vision, algorithms and AI in the various waste management businesses. Cameras are placed in the EfW pit to film the dumping of waste trucks. After this experimental phase, the solution is able to identify 80% of the flows dumped. And the algorithms, which are fed continuously, are constantly improving.

To reduce the carbon footprint of its activities and those of its customers, SUEZ is working to implement innovative solutions directly at its facilities. Most of our sites, such as energy from waste plants, digesters and storage centres, can capture, store and recover CO₂, thereby actively helping to reduce our emissions.

From summer 2024, SUEZ will also be producing a biosourced CO₂ that can be used in agriculture. This carbon, known as biogenic, is produced and purified in a waste digestion unit in addition to the biogas already produced through fermentation. Other avenues for recovery are also being explored, including the production of low-carbon molecules or products such as sustainable aviation fuels.