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00:00There is no way backwards in recycling. There is no way backwards in treating pollutants in your water. There is no way backwards in in in producing local energy. But you're right the trends at times of what you talking in the press may be may be different from one crisis to the next. My job is to go beyond crisis, to anticipate. That's why innovation. We knew we could do recycling of plastics. For years nobody was really interested in that. And suddenly it takes off. But we found a solution in the meantime. So in a way, my job as a chief exec is to deal with the short term and to be able to deliver essential services even in time of crisis, as well as to see the long term. So as you take out the nasty stuff, as you say, out of some of these water products, do you see actually more of them being added? I know there's a number of studies on microplastics and wherever we find them, especially in the brain, in the water. Do you see the amount of some of the things that is harmful being used more and so does it make it your job more difficult to then purify that? I guess the way I would say it is like science progresses and makes progress so we discover more things. Does it mean that they are new? But we maybe didn't have the the knowledge about them. Again, the good news is to anticipate. So we are able to treat them. Has we discovered their existent and the problem associated with it. We are able to treat typhus within Veolia end to end solution whatever type of typhus we have. So what's your biggest challenge, for example, in that to become more scalable? Is it getting the money from governments or from cities, or is it actually building them fast enough? So how could I speed up in a way? It's a question I constantly ask myself. And your team I'm sure. Scale up and speed up. And it's fair to say that I'm quite demanding to my team in terms of can we go faster because our fellow citizens are craving for, in a way, us bringing the solution more Veolia faster is good news for all of us in a way. So I guess what do we need to be efficient? We need money. We usually can find it and we have money available potentially in many, many places. We need a clear, let's say, legal framework. So stability of the legislation is key there. We need as well the citizens to be on board and to understand the general public to understand. But we've conveyed a survey across 25 countries and 25,000 people across the globe in many, many countries. And this is clear now, the general public does understand that the costs of inaction will be higher than the cost of action. So they are asking for those type of solutions. And then you need people like us to invent the solution and to have the scale to be able to deploy them and to invest in innovation as well.

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Veolia CEO Says There's No Going Backwards on Recycling

Estelle Brachlianoff, the CEO of Veolia, says the public is craving solutions to the world's environmental problems because people understand that "the cost of inaction will be higher than the cost of action." In an interview on Leaders With Lacqua Goes Green, Brachlianoff says her job is to speed up and scale up the solutions as they are developed. (Source: Bloomberg)

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The only daily news program focused exclusively on technology, innovation and the future of business from San Francisco. Hosted by Emily Chang.
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