The Press day was hosted by Antoine Frérot, Chairman and CEO of Veolia, and attended by Régis Calmels, Senior Executive Vice President and Asia Director, and the management of business activities in China, who offered their responses to the challenges posed by a resource scarcity.
China has already realized the importance of environmental protection, and has come to a consensus that its economy cannot be developed at the expense of the environment, according to Mr. Frérot. Mr. Frérot noted that Veolia’s advantage lies in the ability to contribute to China’s high quality development, i.e. developing the economy efficiently while preserving resources and protecting the environment.
Mr. Frérot also announced the step up of Veolia’s business strategy in China, with a stronger focus on collaborating with Chinese companies, to achieve sustainable and high-quality development.
Afterwards, Régis Calmels, Senior Executive Vice President and Asia Director, gave an introduction of Veolia’s businesses in Asia and talked about Veolia’s strategy in China.
“As leader of the industry, our task is to explore new frontiers develop innovative solutions and prepare for upcoming challenges.” said Antoine Frérot, Chairman and CEO of Veolia.
In the event, Veolia played a VR movie titled “The world of 2040 is created today”. The movie predicted a series of challenges the human race will be facing in 2040, including a food and energy shortage and environmental pollution.
On the day, Veolia released the findings of the survey “The Challenges of our Resources”, which was conducted upon its request by French Polling Agency ELABE. 14000 respondents aged 18 or above were randomly selected from 28 countries across the world to take part in the survey, which aimed to find out how concerned people from different countries were about environmental issues and which environmental aspects they fell in.
Survey results showed that 89% of Chinese respondents believed their country had the capability to deal with environmental challenges and a resource crisis we would be facing 20 years later, which was the highest among all countries.
