E5 Resource use and circular economy

Arcadis has identified the following sub-topic within ESRS E5 Resource use and circular economy as material: ‘waste’.

At Arcadis, we are committed to promoting sustainable practices, including appropriate waste management, in our operations, in the projects we undertake for our clients, and in our involvement in the value chains to which we belong.

We have screened our site locations and own business activities to identify our actual and potential impacts, risks and opportunities related to waste. Waste data collection for a growing number of Arcadis locations is performed by Arcadis' EMS managers. 

In Arcadis' predominantly office-based activities, a limited amount of waste is generated and collected separately for off-site recycling, re-use or disposal. Waste fractions include: paper and cardboard, organic waste, plastic food containers and bottles as well as packaging waste, construction waste from office refurbishments, batteries, e-waste (phones, computers and monitors), office furniture and fixtures, and residual waste.

In our projects for clients, we may also play a role in waste minimization, sometimes directed at reorganizing waste collection systems so that more separation leads to more recycling or by diverting waste streams to make them suitable for other purposes. For example, we engaged in a project in Chile where we assisted in the separation of organic waste streams, helping to reduce methane emissions from landfills and while using those same waste streams for renewable energy production.

Impacts, risks and opportunities 

Policies related to resource use and circular economy

Arcadis has a dedicated policy for Resource Use and Circular Economy which focuses entirely on the material topic of waste. This policy establishes design effectiveness by addressing material IROs in Arcadis’ value chain. Arcadis’ goals with this Resource Use and Circular Economy Policy are to:

• Identify how Arcadis affects resource use, including resource efficiency, avoiding the depletion of resources, and introducing sustainable sourcing and use of renewable resources in terms of material positive and negative actual or potential impacts.

• 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 arising from resource use, including our measures to help decouple economic growth from the use of materials; and to address risks and opportunities.

• Describe to stakeholders our plans and capacity to adapt our strategy and business model in line with circular economy principles including but not limited to minimizing waste, maintaining the value of products, materials, and other resources at their highest value, and enhancing their efficient use in production and consumption.

• Outline to stakeholders how we manage the material risks and opportunities related to our impacts and dependencies arising from resource use and circular economy.

• Provide insight to stakeholders into the financial effects on Arcadis over the short-, medium- and long-term of the material risks and opportunities arising from Arcadis’ impacts and dependencies on resource use and circular economy.

Furthermore, our policy specifically addresses the use of secondary (recycled) resources and sustainable sourcing by promoting the procurement of consumables, cleaning materials, office supplies, office furniture, IT equipment, and other materials for use in our office environments to the extent possible from sources that honor the principles of the circular economy.

The Resource Use and Circular Economy 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 with suppliers in our upstream and downstream value chain.

The Chief Growth Officer is the member of the Executive Leadership Team who is responsible for sustainability, including accountability for the implementation of the Resource Use and Circular Economy Policy.

Actions and resources related to resource use and circular economy

Own operations  

Arcadis applies the following key principles in its own operations regarding responsible resource use and the circular economy, providing operational effectiveness for material IROs in our own operations.

We improve resource efficiency by:

• Conducting regular assessments to identify opportunities for reducing resource consumption and waste generation.

• Implementing measures to optimize the use of energy, water, and materials.

• Encouraging employee awareness to enhance resource efficiency.

We commit to promoting a circular economy by: 

• Procuring consumables, cleaning materials, office supplies, office furniture, IT equipment, and other materials for use in our office environments to the extent possible from sources that honor the principles of the circular economy.

We implement effective waste management practices by:

• Implementing waste reduction measures, including waste segregation and recycling, wherever feasible.

• Encouraging the responsible disposal of hazardous and non-recyclable waste.

• Collaborating with waste management service providers regarding proper waste treatment and disposal.

Waste in own operations

We began assessing waste from our own operations globally by waste type and disposal method in 2024 (see tables: Wasted broken down by waste disposal method and Waste broken down by waste type); this provided better visibility into our waste streams, a key objective of our Resource Use and Circular Economy Policy. In a few countries where we operate, our offices have assessed in previous years as well. Measured data for office waste was available from 73 offices. For the offices which had not yet started to collect waste data in 2024, the average waste intensity per FTE by waste type from 40 offices (for which the data was available before the data entry deadline) has been prorated using the FTE of the missing offices and the average Arcadis-specific office attendance in its country. The average office attendance has been calculated based on our annual global survey on commuting and working-from-home (WFH) behavior. The survey was sent to Arcadis employees globally and was answered by 23% of our employees. This survey has been completed by the end of October and includes estimates for November and December. We expect to continue to measure waste annually and increase the amount of measured data available. Employees are our main stakeholders where it relates to this policy for our own operations and play a key role in addressing waste reduction throughout Arcadis.

The expected future outcome of these actions is a further improvement of resource efficiency, an increase in procurement of circular consumables and other materials, and more effective waste management for Arcadis which will support the achievement of our policy objectives.

Wasted broken down by waste disposal method

Waste broken down by waste type

Targets related to resource use and circular economy

Arcadis’ first objective for 2025 is to develop a robust baseline assessment of the waste we generate in our own operations broken down by waste stream. Once that assessment has been completed, we may consider setting reduction targets. In the years to come, we intend to monitor the effectiveness of our actions described in our Resource Use and Circular Economy Policy, which was introduced in 2024. Our Environmental Management System is the primary process we will use to track quantitative effectiveness of our policies and actions. As we have not yet begun tracking the effectiveness of our actions, we have not yet specified our defined level of ambition to be achieved when tracking the effectiveness of our policy and actions.

Through its EMS standard, Arcadis tracks the effectiveness of its resource use and circular economy policy and actions in relation to material impacts, risks and opportunities for its own operations. EMS processes include the development of action plans to address material sustainable topics, including waste. These plans will list the actions to undertake, the resources required, the responsible party, the timeline, progress measurement tools and measurement, as well as reporting. Ambitions will be formulated if base year information is assessed to be of sufficient granularity and quality. Indicators will be the amount of waste produced, and the reduction of that amount on an annual basis, measured in metric tons. For value-chain related activities, we will use the phase-in period to develop a similar step-by-step action plan.