Arcadis has been recognized by the Environmental Business Journal with a series of awards highlighting the company’s strengths in pandemic resilience and social responsibility. A virtual award ceremony will be held on February 11-12, honoring the award-winning organizations and projects for their outstanding business performance.
“We can’t say it enough – collaborating in new ways is incredibly important to our collective ability to face the world’s unprecedented challenges,” said John Horst, executive director of corporate development and innovation. “We appreciate EBJ’s recognition for building true partnerships with our clients, quickly responding to a global health crisis and incorporating new technologies into our projects to keep our people safe.”
The four awards Arcadis earned include:
Social contribution award: Arcadis and Dow have partnered globally to support Dow’s #PullingOurWeight campaign, a volunteer initiative that involves events all over the world to recover waste from the environment and properly recycle or dispose of it. The campaign was created to spark a global movement emphasizing three areas: encouraging education, emphasizing the importance of recycling and collaborating across the plastic value chain. Arcadis has supported more than 15 of these events all over the world, including Canada, Europe, the United States, Brazil and China. Despite the pandemic, Arcadis helped Dow to recover more than a million pounds of waste during their clean-up efforts in 2020.
COVID Resilience Award: In 2020, Arcadis launched its COVID Operational Risk Management Platform. This digital platform supported the agile implementation of new health and safety procedures, inventories of field supplies and PPE, a dynamic system to ensure compliance with constantly changing state, federal and municipal orders, and more. The platform was developed with global collaboration in only a few days and continues to be updated with the latest safety standards to ensure all Arcadis activities remain safe during the pandemic.
COVID Response Award: To help municipal and corporate leaders better understand the spread of COVID-19 within their communities, Arcadis partnered with Syracuse University, Quadrant Biosciences, SUNY ESF and Upstate Medical University to pilot a COVID-19 wastewater detection program for upstate New York. Using sampling, analysis and deep technical knowledge of wastewater collection systems, Arcadis and partners worked to develop a wastewater surveillance system for SARS-CoV-2 infections in the region. Wastewater surveillance has helped with early detection of viral load indicating the presence of asymptomatic or presymptomatic cases, allowing timely actions to prevent the spread.
Project Merit Award: Arcadis was recognized for its work helping a confidential client modernize environmental management at a former coal mine in central Pennsylvania. The client had planned a conventional hydraulic dredging of sludges that had accumulated in a settling pond for more than 36 years. To keep employees safe, Arcadis developed an approach that didn’t require putting staff on the water. Instead, the team used a remote operated dredge and air and water drones. The team also used VR technology to allow the client to see the progress remotely without having to physically travel to the site. In addition, the dredged sludge was repurposed instead of sending it to a landfill, which delivered carbon reductions of nearly 50 tons.
