The Snapshot
Data Visualization – Critical business data made accessible and transparent
Simplification – Management of complex production and logistic chains made simplern
Sustainability – Solution facilitates and encourages transition to greener, circular economy
The Challenge
With a history spanning over 160 years, SUEZ is a market leader in the utilities and waste management market – providing its customers with access to water and waste services, through resilient and innovative solutions.
Processing and treating wastewater and effluents is a complex industry that deals with massive volumes (a large city like New York can demand the processing of up to 5 billion litres of water every day), is strictly controlled by multiple safety, health and environmental laws and regulations, and is characterized by complex logistical chains – all this in a sector where the slightest anomaly can quickly become an environmental or public health disaster.
The increasing volume of sludge produced by water treatment in highly populated areas is a major concern for local authorities and operators. Processing sludge to reduce volume and transform it into recoverable products has become a necessity.
In France, there is a “return to soil” policy regarding the use of sludge that is produced by municipal and industrial water treatment – 70% of sludge produced in France is already used in agriculture as an alternative to synthetic or mined fertilizers.
Devoteam developed the SludgeAdvanced solution to optimize efficiency in the management of the complex value chain that involves the production, processing, distribution, stockage and use of sludge-based fertilizers.
The Solution
The SludgeAdvanced solution is used by municipalities and industrial companies. Users include municipality staff, farmers, wastewater treatment plant operators, laboratories, and delivery drivers. The solution streamlines the process of turning wastewater sludge into agricultural fertilizer, thereby turning a waste product into a valuable resource.
It is an end-to-end solution that provides support to the management of the processes involved in recovering, treating, selling, transporting, and spreading finished fertilizer and sludge-based compost products.
SludgeAdvanced enables the digitalization of traceability processes, optimization of managerial procedures, and improvement of transparency and trust for all stakeholders. The strict traceability compliance requirements imposed by French circular economy regulations are enforced through the use of blockchain technology.
The solution also supports the complex stock management process of sludge byproducts, as there are specific protocols that regulate how and when these sludges can be used by farmers.
The SludgeAdvanced Solution developed by Devoteam is a recipient of the OutSystems Innovation Award 2022 for Environmental Impact, as encouraging farmers to use fewer chemicals reduces resource depletion, costs, pollution, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions. In France alone, using sludge-based agricultural fertilizer avoids the production of 35,000 tons of synthetic nitrogen per year and the mining of 30.000 tons of phosphorus.
SludgeAdvanced encourages the transition to a greener, more sustainable, and more circular economy by making the sludge recovery process easy and transparent for all stakeholders.
Building new business propositions for the circular economy is an experimental process. That’s why we embraced low-code application development. We need to get to market with new digital solutions quickly and cost-effectively so we can test them with customers. Moreover, we need to refine and adjust them quickly, especially as we roll out to more organizations.
Antoine Le Feuvre
CEO SUEZ Circular Solutions