Ecological project
Our environmentally focused activities are mainly in sustainable mobility and various 'Green Deals’, voluntary agreements between private-sector partners and the Flemish government to achieve specific environmental objectives together. In sustainable mobility, we are in the vanguard of electric driving, adopting the principle of ‘Electric First’.
Electric First: the choice for sustainable mobility
We have been operating an Electric First policy for our company vehicles for some years now. We are replacing existing petrol and diesel vehicles with the most environmentally friendly alternative available at the time. If a fully electric model meets the needs in terms of action radius or load capacity, then electric is our first choice.
Over the past year, we replaced 290 company vehicles running on petrol and diesel – including leased vehicles – with fully electric, plug-in hybrid or compressed natural gas (CNG) models. Over the coming years, a total of about 800 company vehicles will be replaced this way.
Electric is currently the best alternative for cars and small vans. For larger vans that drive many kilometres or transport heavy equipment, CNG is more suitable as yet. The decision to go ‘as green as possible’ and ‘electric when possible’ means that Fluvius will eventually be saving more than 1 million litres of fossil fuels a year.
Number of sustainable company vehicles at Fluvius 2017-2020
Our fleet consists today largely of plug-in hybrid vehicles, followed by ones that run on natural gas and then by fully electric vehicles.
| Number/Year | 2019 |
2020 |
|---|---|---|
| Electricity | 61 |
103 |
| CNG (natural gas) | 246 |
315 |
| Plug-in hybrid | 206 |
386 |
Green Deal: ecologically friendly choices
Two years ago, the Flanders Circular partnership launched the ‘Green Deal’ concept, a voluntary agreement letting the Flemish Government start up a green project together with companies and civil society organisations, aiming to get environmental goals to go hand in hand with good business operations.
A Green Deal is a statement of intent in which all parties undertake to do everything possible to achieve the project. Ideally, this kind of statement of intent should last for three or four years.
In recent years, Fluvius has joined two Green Deal projects for:
- circular processing of old workwear,
- circular procurement of polyethylene piping,
- maximum reusability when purchasing digital meters.
Circular procurement: from an old T-shirt to an eco-sweater
One example of these Green Deals is our recycled workwear. When we bought new working clothes for the new merged organisation of Fluvius, we collected in all the old workwear. The T-shirts and sweatshirts made of high-quality fibre were shredded and turned into new yarns that will be used from now on to produce brand-new, 'circular' Fluvius T-shirts and sweatshirts. The new design will also be environmentally friendly so that further recycling will be possible. That is why we have for example avoided large prints, as printed pieces of textile are not suitable for recycling.