3. Environment 3.3 Managing natural resources The Group is committed to the responsible management of natural resources such as energy, water and raw materials, recognizing that this is a major social and economic challenge. GEODIS strives to optimize the use of these resources and reduce its reliance on fossil fuels by encouraging the use of alternative renewable energies. The circular economy opens up new business opportunities for the Group. Global economic growth is closely tied to the use of both renewable and non-renewable natural resources. Faced with the depletion of natural resources and, more generally, with the potential impact of their use on the environment, GEODIS is developing its practices towards a more economical organization, contributing to the disconnection between economic growth and the consumption of non-renewable resources. One of the main challenges for the transport and logistics sector is to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels. GEODIS must not only reduce its energy needs, but also replace fossil fuels with renewable energies (biofuels and renewable electricity), while avoiding conflicts of use. Transport and logistics could also play a key role in facilitating the management and reuse of resources, in line with the development of the circular economy. In the future, this will become central to all businesses, for environmental reasons (climate change, waste and pollution in general) but also for economic reasons (the circular economy makes businesses less sensitive to a shortage of primary resources). The growth of the circular economy, regarded as one of the priorities of the European Green Deal, is creating new flows to enable the recovery, processing, repair and recycling of products. This transition creates new business opportunities for the Group: the circular model requires a different organization in which logistics plays an essential role between the various players (collectors, recyclers, etc.). In addition, these new flow loops require the creation of synergies with partners (pooling of processes, sharing of information) to ensure the sustainability of the model (pooling and consolidation of flows). GEODIS’s commitments in favor of the circular economy are on two levels: ● customer flows: the Group supports its customers by providing them with solutions for redefining their logistics flows and creating virtuous loops; ● management of operational sites: internally, the Group applies the principles of the circular economy to its own operations to reduce its environmental footprint (e.g., to limit its use of natural resources and its production of waste). Circularity in customer flows GEODIS works closely with its customers on managing the life and second life of their products, i.e., their physical reinjection into an economic circuit. In Europe, the European Commission adopted a new action plan for the circular economy in 2020, which is one of the main elements of the European Green Pact. This plan focuses on design and production from a circular economy perspective, so that products placed on the EU market are designed to last longer and are easier to reuse, repair and recycle. In France, legislation in 2020 to combat waste and promote the circular economy introduced a repairability index for electrical and electronic products to combat premature obsolescence and improve the lifespan of products. As for the collection of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), this must be accompanied by sorting, selective treatment and waste recovery. Reverse logistics has become a legal obligation for manufacturers of electronic products. GEODIS’s expertise also covers reverse logistics. It has several equipment reconditioning centers around the world. The Group uses a range of skills to recondition discarded, damaged or end-of-life electronic products to increase their value and that of their components. This process enables the Group to recover 99% of the materials from the electronic waste of customers who give it to GEODIS to handle. Mid-life products sometimes just need to be inspected, reinitialized and refurbished to be returned to circulation on the market. The operations performed also include repairs to prevent a defective product from moving to the next stages of the process (recycling, dismantling), thereby increasing its lifetime. 52 - 2023 ACTIVITY AND SUSTAINABILITY REPORT
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