On Thursday 24 October 2019 Sinead Patton, Chief Financial and Commercial Officer, Veolia Ireland, took part in a discussion on the importance of sustainability to business in an event in Trinity Business School organised by the France Ireland Chamber of Commerce and Business in the Community Ireland.
We have seen a significant change in recent years as sustainability is increasingly at or near the top of the agenda in many sectors. Increasingly, society is expecting business to take the lead when it comes to sustainability.
This is reflected in initiatives such as Business in the Community’s Low Carbon Pledge, where Veolia was one of the initial 43 signatories in 2018, and the France Ireland Chamber of Commerce Working Group on Climate Impact, where Veolia is also involved.
This is one of the key developments that Sinead Patton, Chief Financial and Commercial Officer, Veolia Ireland; Augustin Blanc, General Manager, Servier; Seamus Egan, Managing Director, Transdev and Gemma Donnelly-Cox, Co-Director of the Trinity Centre for Social Innovation discussed with Tomás Sercovich, CEO, Business in the Community Ireland at a joint Business in the Community Ireland / France Ireland Chamber of Commerce event which took place in Trinity Business School.
In Veolia, we are seeing this change in focus appearing in the types of questions we are being asked by our existing customers and the wide variety of solutions we are proposing to organisations to meet their sustainability needs. This includes turning waste into a resource, reducing carbon emissions as part of energy efficiency projects and delivering a water treatment infrastructure that meets our future needs as a society.
Working in partnership across industry and society can help us to balance the opportunities that are out there with the cost of implementing them while delivering visible results.
