E2 Pollution

The sub-topic determined to be material for the standard E2 Pollution is ‘pollution of soil’, which refers to a company or organization’s emissions to soil as well as the prevention, control, and reduction of such emissions. It is important to note that, through our mostly office-based design and consultancy activities, we do not contribute to soil pollution in our own operations. In our own operations, we do not emit to soil any of the 91 substances listed in the European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register.

Arcadis does, however, contribute to the reduction of soil pollution through our environmental restoration activities. Our Resilience Global Business Area offers environmental solutions consultancy, including soil remediation services. The purpose of remediation services is to remove pollution. We use analytical testing of the soil to detect pollutants prior to treating it, as well as after treating it where appropriate (i.e., if it wasn't removed and transported to an appropriate disposal facility). This demonstrates our contribution to the reduction of soil pollution.

Impacts, risks and opportunities

Policies related to pollution 

Arcadis has a specific policy related to pollution. Our Pollution Policy outlines our commitment and approach to minimizing pollution to soil and potential environmental harms resulting from our activities. This policy establishes design effectiveness by addressing material IROs in our value chain. We strive to protect the environment and contribute to a cleaner and healthier planet.

To meet this commitment to preventing pollution of soil across our value chain, we aim to:

• Identify how Arcadis affects pollution of soil, in terms of positive and negative material impacts, both actual and potential.  

• Report annually to our various stakeholders, via our Sustainability Statement, what actions we have taken –and the result of such actions – to prevent or mitigate material actual or potential negative impacts, and to address risks and opportunities.  

• Describe our plans and capacity to adapt our strategy and business model in line with the transition to a sustainable economy and with the need to prevent, control and eliminate pollution. This is to create a toxic-free environment with zero pollution. The policy also states our support for the EU Action Plan, “Towards a Zero Pollution for Air, Water and Soil.”  

• Outline to our various stakeholders, via our annual Sustainability Statement, the nature, type, extent and management of our material risks, dependencies and opportunities related to our pollution-related impacts. This includes details about the prevention, control, elimination, or reduction of pollution, including where this results from the application of regulations.  

• Provide insight to stakeholders into the financial effects on Arcadis over the short-, medium- and long-term of material risks and opportunities arising from our material pollution-related impacts and dependencies. 

Arcadis already performs soil remediation projects as described above and endeavors to have the above steps completed for its value chain related activities by the end of the phase-in period.

The policy clearly outlines the roles and responsibilities related to soil pollution for different teams within Arcadis and is backed up by an implementation plan geared towards embedding the policy throughout Arcadis’ global activities.

The Chief Growth Officer is the member of the Executive Leadership Team who is responsible for sustainability, including accountability for the implementation of the Pollution Policy.

The Pollution Policy's scope applies to Arcadis’ office-based activities globally, including the spaces leased by Arcadis in multi-tenant buildings with shared common facilities. It also applies to our project activities for clients, and our activities with suppliers in our upstream and downstream value chain.

Arcadis tracks the effectiveness of its policy and actions in relation to the material impacts as it tracks growth in its soil remediation activities. The process underlying this is revenue recognition. Our ambition is to further grow these activities; however, revenue targets are not published at that level of granularity as this can be competitively sensitive. It is our intention to ultimately measure progress in cubic meters of soil cleaned. Material risks and opportunities were not identified and are therefore not tracked, while no ambition or measurement for these are expected to be developed.

Actions and resources related to pollution   

The expected outcome of the steps described in our Pollution Policy is better visibility of our impacts related to soil pollution, including the potential risks, allowing us to further develop mitigation measures.

The actions described below are expected to provide operational effectiveness for Arcadis’ value chain. For EU taxonomy related disclosure related to CapEX and OpEx, see the EU Taxonomy Chapter.

Own operations

In our own operations, we do not anticipate taking any further action on the issue of soil pollution, as there is no significant risk of an occurrence of soil pollution at our office locations. Tracking for the effectiveness of this policy for our own operations is performed semi-annually via our Environmental Management System, which indicated that further development of mitigation measures was not necessary.

Upstream value chain

We assess our main suppliers on environment-related issues, with the help of a digital tool that continuously scans for sustainability and human rights risks and generates alerts. We use this to check for issues with our main suppliers related to the following topics:

• Environmental issues: Negative adverse or harmful effects or mistreatment of the biophysical environment from human activity, including deterioration of the natural environment through processes such as deforestation, climate change, and unsustainable resource use, leading to loss of biodiversity, ecosystem damage, and health hazards.

• Leakage: Chemical leakage by a company or production site. This includes accidental release of harmful substances, such as wastewater, chemicals, and restricted substances, from production sites or companies, leading to environmental and health hazards.

• Pollution: Pollution or contamination by a company or production site that has negative effects on nature, people or animals, including introduction of harmful substances or contaminants into the natural environment, resulting in air, water, and soil degradation, adverse health effects, and ecological damage.

• POP pollution: Forbidden production and/or use of Stockholmer Convention-listed persistent organic pollutant (POP) substances and non-environmentally friendly use of POP-containing waste, including contamination of the environment with POPSs, which are toxic chemicals that resist degradation, accumulate in living organisms, and pose serious health and ecological risks.

• Toxic release: Toxic pollution (gas, liquid or radiation) by a company or production site, including the release of harmful chemicals and substances, such as lead, Asbestos, and mercury, into the environment, causing poisoning and/or carcinogenic, genotoxic, and mutagenic effects, and leading to serious health and ecological risks.

Where deemed material, Arcadis will follow up with the supplier to address identified issues, as appropriate. These cases are subject to non-disclosure agreements so cannot be shared. The expected outcome of the above steps is that we will address the identified issue with the supplier to mitigate its impact and prevent recurrence. Our ambition is to identify and actively address identified issues with our suppliers to achieve mitigation. We currently apply these scans to a selection of our suppliers, expanding that universe to cover most suppliers when the phase-in period ends.

Downstream value chain

Arcadis has more than 35 years of experience in environmental remediation of soil and (ground)water and our existing remediation activities already contribute to our policy goal of reducing soil pollution.

To improve the outcomes of soil restoration projects and contribute to a further reduction of soil pollution, we continually innovate our remediation activities, this is an ongoing process. For example, we use Thermal In Situ Remediation (TISR®) to effectively treat environmental contaminants in soil and groundwater.

TISR harnesses renewable energy, employing a closed-loop heating system enabled by thermal conduction and advection that elevates subsurface temperatures. The rise in temperature enhances biological, chemical and physical processes, resulting in the attenuation, degradation and removal of contaminants. TISR can be used with existing infrastructure, reducing raw material needs. Once site cleanup is complete, the above-ground equipment can be redeployed.

Targets related to pollution  

Arcadis seeks to develop a methodology to measure the magnitude of its contribution to the reduction of soil pollution in cubic meters of soil during the value-chain phase-in period. In the years to come, we hope to be able to quantify our actual contribution to the reduction of the pollution of soil. Associated metrics for this contribution are in development, as is a measurement system. Once this measuring system is in place, and once we have assessed whether the captured metrics are accurate and informative, we may consider setting a voluntary target for our contributions to the reduction of soil pollution.