Major Research Partnerships Signed with SUEZ and Veolia in 2025
Environmental Science | Paris, France | 2025
Dealing with the huge problem of PFAS pollution and the tricky ways to clean it up, France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) is teaming up with major companies in the water and waste industries. They signed two deals in 2025 with big names like SUEZ and Veolia. This shows how they plan to work together on research and find new solutions. The goal is to mix CNRS’s top-notch science with the ability of these companies to build and put into action systems that clean up pollution and keep an eye on the environment.
What They’re Focusing On
Some of the main things they’re working on include:
Finding all the different PFAS chemicals, not just the ones already on lists
Better ways to treat tiny pollutants
Finding good uses for sewage sludge
Using computer smarts to guess what environmental problems might pop up
PFAS Cleanup Day
On October 6, CNRS held a day called “PFAS: Messy Cleanup Problems.” People got together to share what they’ve learned, show off cool projects, and talk about what’s next. The key is new ideas. Top research groups in France, labs across Europe, private companies, and startups are joining forces to come up with ways to grab and get rid of these pollutants for good, so we can keep our water clean.
What are PFAS?
These chemicals have been around since the 1950s because they don’t stick, repel water, and resist heat. You can find them in all sorts of things we use every day—food wrappers, pans, clothes, makeup, firefighting foam, batteries, and paint. They’re so widely used because they have a super-strong bond that means they don’t break down easily in nature.
Working Together
As people pointed out, we can’t clean up this mess without coming up with new ideas, and that means everyone needs to work together. CNRS is at the center of this, with researchers, tech companies, and industries all pooling their talents to create the cleanup solutions of the future.
The partnerships with SUEZ and Veolia are a great example of how mixing smart science with the ability to build stuff can speed up the process of finding ways to treat pollution and keep an eye on the environment. It’s how we can tackle one of the biggest environmental problems we face right now.
Source: CNRS (Centre national de la recherche scientifique), October 2025
