Our commitment to innovation and technology is a core part of our customer and sustainability strategies. We seek to apply our expertise and creativity to solve challenges for our own operations, our customers’ operations and for society.
Performance Metrics
Metric | UN Sustainable Development Goal | 2023 North America Result | 2024 North America Result | 2025 North America Result | 2025 North America Target |
Hours logged by employees volunteering on company time | 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth | New metric for 2024 | 629.5 hours | 2,558 hours | 2,000 hours |
Community Workforce Development
The water and wastewater services industry is facing an inevitable shift: more well-trained professionals are needed to join the industry and workforce as others choose to leave it or retire. Without qualified individuals to ensure state and federal standards are met for drinking water and wastewater, communities risk failing to provide an essential public health service to their residents and local businesses. We also offer a free online training tool called Veolia Workforce Academy North America to support water professionals, whether or not they work for Veolia, to help build the workforce.
Community Outreach and Volunteerism
Veolia employees are among our most powerful community assets. Through the Veolia Cares program, every employee receives a paid volunteer day each year to dedicate to a cause aligned with our mission.
In 2025, employees in North America served meals to veterans, ran food and gift drives, mentored young people and organized park and beach cleanups, exceeding 2,000 volunteer hours.
Access to Essential Services
In 2025, we expanded our successful Customer Assistance Program into Pennsylvania, enabling us to provide more robust support for customers in need of water bill assistance. Eligible customers who qualify will have access to discounts and additional benefits like arrearage forgiveness, water conservation and leak repair support. This program is already active in New York, which provides bill discounts, conservation rebates and a reconnection fee waiver. Since the program went into effect, 2,828 customers have received benefits with a total of $577,206 in shareholder funding supporting bill discounts and program costs.
Government Affairs, Stakeholder Engagement and Alliances
Partnerships and alliances are critical to achieve sustainability at scale. We engage with a broad network of stakeholders across all levels of government, industry and academia to ensure meaningful engagement with partners to advance our strategic business priorities, including the GreenUp strategy.
Our stakeholder engagement program is led by the EVP of Government Affairs, Sustainability and Purpose and overseen by our regional CEO. All memberships undergo formal review for alignment with Veolia’s values, active engagement and conflicts of interest. Each key relationship is assigned an executive sponsor and account manager, with regular updates to leadership informing strategic decisions.
This network of alliances brings valuable external perspectives to our leadership’s decision-making. In the year ahead, we plan to deepen stakeholder accountability by establishing municipal and industry committees that will meet regularly with our leaders to offer feedback and strategic input.
