Biodiversity - Ecology Day of COLAS Group
12th July 2022
On Thursday, 9th June, COLAS Group held its second Ecology Day in its companies around the world. This year's subject of biodiversity is an important environmental topic for the whole Group, which launched its Low Carbon and Biodiversity Strategy Plan in 2020.
Ecology Day is a part of the Group CSR strategy, or the ACT (Act & Commit Together) programme, one of the commitments of which is to implement the low-carbon and biodiversity strategy with the aim to help to protect the planet. Last year’s Ecology Day was dedicated to issues related to climate change. This year, the main subject was biodiversity. The aim of the event was to inform all employees of the Group about biodiversity, to raise their awareness of its potential loss and to encourage them to take specific measures to protect it. During the Ecology Day, there were educational events, lectures, a card game or a webinar prepared.
"Maintaining the biodiversity is quite a challenge for civil engineering industry and in COLAS, we are fully aware of this. In order to raise the awareness of our employees about these phenomena, we have embraced our Low Carbon and Biodiversity Strategy Plan and we are organising educational events," said Anne-Laure Levent, Manager of Department of Environment of COLAS Group.
Ecology day is a part of much broader scope of events that are organised as to contribute to biodiversity.
In 2013, the Group set the goal of implementation of all the measures needed for enhancing biodiversity in each of the quarries and HAMPs before 2030. Until 2021, there were realised at least one event per 207 facilites, i.e. restoration of water streams, creation of slopes, recesses and shelters for animals and insects, adjustments of activities in order to respect bird nesting and many more. The events realised with co-operation with experts include several ones focused on protection of local species such as saker falcon, Bonelli's eagle or viviparous lizard.
COLAS Group wants to spread this goal further over all its facilities. In order to do so, there was a guide published and distributed, containing the activities benefiting the biodiversity. One of such activities is, for example, planting hedges around our facilities as to supply a cover for local species.
At the moment, our participation in Forest & Life programme is still successfully ongoing. It has begun in France in 2021 and ion the course of it, there were 15,000 trees planted nearby Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
