Many responsible private, public and third sector organisations are very familiar with the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change and with it being the primary international and intergovernmental forum for negotiating the global response to climate change.
Averda constantly adheres to and strives to implement the Sustainable Development Goals as defined in “Transforming Our World - the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” – in all the markets it operates in. We believe that everyone – including government authorities, corporate entities and, primarily, individuals – can be motivated to care for the environment and take responsibility for their actions.
The shift taken by the emerging markets towards environmentally sustainable economies entails not just the transformation of the markets themselves but also that of behaviours, products and processes. This is exactly why, in all the countries where Averda is present, we want to make a difference and ensure that we have an impactful deployment of new technologies and new skills.
Although we often encounter a legacy of environmental problems and excessive energy use in the new markets we penetrate, we have found that the behaviour of the local population regarding the sustainable and dynamic environmental responsibility can be changed. However, as with any large-scale change processes, it takes resilience and a strong embedded desire to succeed to change that one parameter that matters most: people’s attitudes towards waste, towards environmental sustainability and towards a better quality of life.
A report recently commissioned by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the World Bank Group and the European Investment Bank in four SEMED (Southern and Eastern Mediterranean) countries – Morocco being one of them - between 2013 and 2015, summarises the key results of the first Middle East and North Africa Enterprise Surveys (MENA ES). While its findings may not be surprising for many, there is one significant aspect that stands out for foreign investors like Averda, as highlighted in the above-mentioned report: “Firms in three out of four SEMED countries considered competitors’ practices in the informal sector to be among the top three obstacles.”
For Averda, Morocco is a very important growing market, showing incredible signs of development and competitiveness, having a strong pool of NGOs and community groups whose availability in terms of advice and support Averda finds highly attractive.
In Morocco, the youth unemployment is a significant social challenge. We are committed, as an organisation, to ensure that all our employees in Morocco are not just having a job that helps them provide for their families - we are committed to train them, share our knowledge and expertise with them and make them feel as an integral part of the wider Averda family.
359 of our employees have ages between 20-30 years old and their roles within Averda Morocco vary across our departments: maintenance, operations and support. They receive constant and sustained training in all key areas falling under Averda’s line of business, starting with health and safety rules and regulations and ending with the fundamental principles to ISO standards for certification.
While governments legislate change and enforce it, private organisations abide by its principles. However, it is only the local populations who can make the change lasting and sustainable – “waste” is not an ugly word; “waste” is a by-product of our daily activities and it is only down to each and every one of us to make sure that “waste” is minimized, capitalised upon and reused as much as possible.
A new Averda waste management facility for King Abdullah University of Science and Technology is designed to reach zero-waste operations by 2025, making the university the first zero-waste institution in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Commercial scale municipal waste to renewable methanol plant in the Middle East announced during COP27.
Better sourcing and deploying technology can ease some of that pressure.