Eurocoustic - Saint-Gobain Group Assessment of sanitation facilities and characterization of process water

The Saint-Gobain Group has made water conservation one of its priorities, firstly, in terms of its exposure to risks associated with the use of water in its processes, and secondly, because of its involvement in the business of water supply and sanitation.

 

This commitment was reflected in 2011 with the adoption of a ”water policy”.

 

The group's objective is to minimize the quantitative and qualitative impact of its activities on water resources, both in terms of its withdrawals as its discharges: to do so, it must ”withdraw the minimum resource to strive for zero discharge of industrial water in liquid form, while avoiding to generate new impacts for the other environments and/or stakeholders”.

 

This standard should be implemented for all group activities.

Thus the Eurocoustic plant, located in Genouillac in the Creuse, specializing in rock wool manufacturing for insulation, began the implementation of this ”Water Policy”.

 

In its industrial process, Eurocoustic uses large quantities of varied quality water coming from very different sources: water from the stormwater drainage system, water springs and recycled water from various workshops.

In this context and due to the significant transformations experienced by the Genouillac site since its origin, an assessment was launched to draw up an inventory and optimize water management. This decision was supported by the will of developing the site and by a strong influence of the quality of the water used on the quality of insulation products.

This study was also an opportunity for updating the maps of the wastewater collection points on the site, given the numerous changes occurring during developments made in recent years.

This mission was entrusted to IOWater.

To do this, several investigation campaigns were carried out between November 2013 and January 2014. These investigations, which were conducted under variable weather conditions (dry and wet weather), consisted of:

 

All field investigations were conducted by IOWater’s staff. It was the same for water analyses that were made by our laboratory at La Souterraine.

 

Using the field investigations made, the International Office for Water provided a study report including:

This assessment will allow Eurocoustic to launch further investigations to optimize water use on the Genouillac site, according to the ”Water” policy implemented by the Saint- Gobain Group. 4