Last Update: September 29, 2023

 

Veolia North America, LLC and its subsidiaries (collectively, “our,” “us,” “we,” or the “Company”) take your privacy seriously.  This Privacy Notice applies to our customers and individuals that use our website, mobile website, and mobile applications (collectively, “Site”), as well as our products and services (collectively, “Services”).

 

This Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use, disclose, and store (“Process”) personal information that you provide directly to us, through your interactions with our Site and through the sites of our partners, as well as information collected from other sources, including third parties, to enhance our Site and Services that best serve you.  By providing us with personal information when interacting with our Site or Services after reviewing this Privacy Notice, you consent to our use and disclosure of that information in the manner described in this Privacy Notice. 

Please be aware that third-party sites accessible through our Site(s) have their own privacy notices and data Processing practices.  The data Processing activities of those third-party sites linked to our Site(s) do not apply to this Privacy Notice.  Additionally, this Privacy Notice does not cover Personal Information that we collect on behalf of our clients in the role of a service provider.

 

1. PERSONAL INFORMATION WE COLLECT AND HOW WE USE IT

“Personal Information” is any information that identifies, locates, relates to, is reasonably capable of being associated with, or could reasonably be linked, directly or indirectly, with you as an individual.  Under certain circumstances, we may collect “Sensitive Personal Information”, which is Personal Information that gives rise to a high reasonable expectation of privacy by virtue of the context in which it is used or communicated or due to its nature, such as your social security number, financial account or payment information, governmentally issued identification number (i.e., driver’s license or passport number), precise geolocation data, biometric data, race, gender or your ethnicity  (For purposes of this Privacy Notice, Personal Information, Sensitive Personal Information shall be collectively referred to as “Personal  Information”). 

We collect most Personal Information directly from you in person, by telephone, text or email, when you create or modify your online account, through self-service transactions, from question, comments or suggestions submitted through surveys or online sources, in documents that include your Personal Information, and/or automatically from our Site(s) or related Services. To learn more about our use of cookies and other equivalent technologies, see our Cookie Policy.  We may also collect information from publicly accessible sources, third parties, and/or from our IT systems.  The table below describes the Personal Information we collect: 

Sources of Personal Information	Categories of Personal Information	Use of Personal Information
Information you provide to us	Contact information, such as your name, number, personal mark (e.g., alias, symbols and/or trade name), postal address, telephone number or mobile phone number, email address.	If you decide to participate, to administer surveys, opinion polls, or enroll you in rebate incentives or other incentive programs; to verify and confirm your identity when you or your authorized agent exercises a privacy right (to the extent permitted by applicable law);  to provide you with information you have requested or agreed to receive as described in our Legal Notice, Legal Disclaimer, and this Privacy Notice; to investigate and respond to alleged fraud or illegal activity; to maintain a quality experience, including to filter for spam and communications that violate our Legal Notice and this Privacy Notice; to enforce compliance with our Legal Notice and applicable law; to comply with our legal obligations; to prosecute or defend a lawsuit, arbitration or similar legal proceeding; and to respond to lawful requests by governmental authorities; to provide customer service, support and quality assurance (i.e., debugging, troubleshooting, or responding to your inquiries over the phone or through email);  to analyze and make decisions about your application and, if your candidacy is retained, to administer your employment in accordance with our internal policies.
	Identifiers, such as an online identifier, unique personal identifier, account identification number or Internet Protocol (“IP”).
	Commercial information, such as  records of personal property, Services purchased or obtained, transactional data or purchase history.
	Sensitive Personal Information (as defined herein) such as your ethnicity, gender/identity, household information, military or veteran status, or other protected classifications.
	Professional or employment-related information, such as a job applicant information, resume, academic and employment history, compensation or salary, or other relevant information relating employment with the Company.
Information our Site collects automatically	Identifiers (as described herein).	to provide you with our Site and Services for advertising and marketing, including interest-based advertising, sequencing, audience categorization, cross-device mapping, and syncing online identifiers with existing Personal Information (provided that you have not withdrawn your consent) to provide and improve our Site’s functionality and user experience, including processing, storing and delivering your communications;  to evaluate use of the Site and to deliver our Services; to ensure the proper use of our Site and Services; to personalize your experience, which includes tailoring the content and information made available to you and our support services; to regularly review consumers’ interactions with our Site and third-party websites, including, but not limited to, cookies-related interactions, metrics related to the movement on our Site, and, if applicable, verifying the positioning and quality of ad impressions; to perform research and analysis to aggregate or de-identify Personal Information collected from various sources for analytical business-related purposes;
	Personal Information that arises from Internet use or other electronic activity, such as interaction with our Site, cookies related data (e.g., browser data, device type, operating system, pages visited on our Site or immediately before visiting our Site, including the time spent, information downloaded, and/or other advertisement data), date and time our Site was visited, network activity, or geolocation data (to the extent permitted).
	Inferences drawn from other Personal Information or Identifiers, such as business information, contact information, or other information relating to you.
	Internet Activity and other electronic activity when you interact with our Site or Services, network activity, log data.
	Identifiers (as described herein).
	Commercial information (as described herein).
	Professional or employment-related information (as described herein).
	Internet or other electronic activity (as described herein).
	Educational information, such as the schools you graduated from or a copy of your educational transcript.  Educational information includes any on the job training or course you enroll in as part of our Company .
	Inferences drawn from other personal information or identifiers, such as information made publicly available by the government or public sources.

 

2. DISCLOSING YOUR INFORMATION

We may disclose your Personal Information to our parent company or its global subsidiaries, affiliate entity or joint ventures: 

• to manage our relationship with you, for compliance purposes, or system and network security; and
• under appropriate intercompany arrangements and confidentiality agreements (to the extent permitted by applicable law), as well as internal policies and security standards. 

We may also disclose your Personal Information to our service providers or contractors (a service provider means any person or legal entity that we engage by contract that processes your personal information on our behalf with specific instructions to help assist us in providing services to you) or with professional advisors, including lawyers, auditors, and insurance companies:

• to receive their services, such as advertising and marketing services to deliver advertisements and/or marketing information;

• in the event of a reorganization, merger or sale and in accordance with applicable laws.

 

Other legitimate business purposes for which we may disclose your information may include:

• if we are required by law, such as to comply with a warrant, subpoena or similar legal process;
• if ordered by federal, state or municipal agencies with jurisdiction over us, who are legally entitled to such information; and if we believe in good faith that disclosure is necessary to: (i) exercise or defend legal claims; (ii) protect our rights, your safety or the safety of others; (iii) investigate fraud, unlawful activity or a cybersecurity incident; and (iv) respond to lawful requests by governmental authorities (including national security and law enforcement agencies); or
• if you consent to disclosing your personal information for a specific purpose, in which case we will notify you and request your consent before doing so.

We only grant access to the third-party’s personnel if it requires access to your personal information, but only (i) to the extent necessary and proportionate to fulfill the Services and (ii) if they have agreed in writing to confidentiality, privacy and security obligations consistent with the terms of this Privacy Notice;

 

3. YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS

Depending on the province where you reside, you may have certain rights with respect to your Personal Information.  This section sets out—in a non-exhaustive manner—the range of rights you may have with respect to your Personal Information and how you can exercise those rights. 

• Right to Access: you may have the right to access your personal information. You may also have the right to receive a copy of your personal information in a structured and commonly used format. 
• Right to Rectification: you may have the right to request that Veolia, upon a verified request, correct inaccurate Personal Information that we maintain about you. 
• Right to Withdraw Consent: Where permitted by law, you may also withdraw your consent to our use and disclosure of the Personal Information we hold about you.  However, we may no longer be able to offer you some of our Services.

 

How to Exercise Your Privacy Rights: You can exercise these privacy rights by: 

• Submitting your privacy rights request using our Privacy Rights Intake Form.
• Your privacy rights request will be directed to the company’s regional data protection officer for review. 

 

Our Response to Your Privacy Rights Request: We will try to respond to a verifiable request within the time-period provided by applicable laws, unless we require additional time to confirm your identity or if your request is complex. In Québec, we will answer your request within 30 days of its receipt.  If we are unable to verify your identity using the information you provide us in your privacy rights request, we may not be able to action your request.  If you use an authorized agent to initiate a privacy rights request, you must email our Privacy Office directly and provide us with a valid power of attorney or other comparable document of written permission from you. Any decision relating to your privacy rights request will be disclosed to you in writing, and you can dispute this decision by contacting us at  [email protected] (for Canada residents), or by contacting your local regulatory authority.

Nothing in this Privacy Notice is intended to limit any additional rights you may have under applicable laws.  Additionally, the Company will not unlawfully discriminate or retaliate against you for exercising your privacy rights.

 

4. MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

When you provide us with your telephone number or email address, we will obtain your consent to communicate with you by telephone or email for marketing purposes.  We will use email periodically to communicate with you about your account, privacy and the Services we provide.  You will receive emails from us (or our authorized third-party providers) if you have signed up to receive email notifications of certain news or events, marketing or promotional content, or if you have requested certain information. If you are a customer with an online account, you may opt out of future mailings by changing your communication preferences at any time through your account or by clicking “unsubscribe” in our emails.  

Customers may not be able to opt out of receiving operational emails for non-promotional, utility-related purposes (such as billing, outage, conservation and safety), emergency alerts or communications, or communications regarding updates to this Privacy Notice.

 

5. YOUR CHOICES

When you make a request for information, to correspond or interact with us or through the Site, email or Text/SMS messaging, you can choose whether you wish to continue to receive additional information and by what method of communication such information should be delivered.  You can unsubscribe directly from emails and/or Text/SMS messages sent to you or contact us using the address listed in the Contact Us section. 

Communications E-mail Alerts.  If you would like to receive company news alerts from us, we ask for your name and email address in order to send you the news alerts.  You may unsubscribe from any of our email communications by emailing the address below.

 

6. CUSTOMER SELF-SERVICE AND ACCOUNT TERMINATION 

If you are a customer with an online account, you may edit your profile information, including your email address and contact information.  When you deactivate your account, you will cease to provide ongoing or future data to us.  In order to request permanent closure of your account, please contact us using the address listed in the Contact Us section.  We will require proof of your identity before responding to any request from you as described in this notice.

 

7. SECURITY

We align our security practices in accordance with industry standards and use reasonable administrative, physical, organizational, and technical measures to seek a level of security appropriate to the risk to the Personal Information we Process.  These measures aim to protect the integrity, confidentiality and availability of our network and systems.  Such measures include, but are not limited to, firewalls, intrusion monitoring and Secure Sockets Layers / Transport Security Layer (SSL/TSL) to encrypt and protect certain sensitive transmissions of Personal Information.  Despite using reasonable measures, it is never possible to fully guarantee the security of your information against breaches in the security of the network and system.  If you believe your interaction with us is no longer secure, please contact us immediately as described in the Contact Us section.

 

8. RETENTION

We will retain your Personal Information only for as long as necessary to fulfill the purposes for which we collected your Personal Information, unless the law permits or requires us to retain your personal information for a longer period. For example, we may need to keep your Personal Information for quality assurance for our Site or to defend future legal claims.  Where permitted by law, we also will retain anonymized information after your account is closed.  

For customer self-service, the information you have shared with others will remain visible after you have closed your account or deleted the information from your own profile or account, and we do not control information or content that others have copied out of our Site.  Please be aware that copies of information that you have updated, modified or deleted may continue to reside in our systems for a defined period, and we may maintain copies of this information as part of our business records.

 

9. CHILDREN’S PRIVACY

If you are under the age of 14, you are not authorized to use our services or the Site, unless we have written consent from your parental or legal guardian. Our Site is intended to provide general information about the Company and its Services.  In the event we learn that we have collected Personal Information from a child under the age of 14, we will take appropriate steps to delete that information.  If you become aware or believe that a child has provided us with personal information, please contact us immediately as provided in the Contact Us section below. 

 

10. PERSONAL INFORMATION TRANSFERS

The Company is headquartered in the United States, but has a parent company with corporate affiliates and operations overseas, including in Europe.  We may transfer your Personal Information to other provinces in Canada, to the United States or to other countries where our parent company, corporate affiliates, agents and service providers operate.  If you live in Québec, your Personal Information may be transferred outside of Québec. Data protection laws differ among jurisdictions, and these other jurisdictions may not provide an equivalent level of protection for Personal Information as where you live.   If we transfer your Personal  Information to another jurisdiction, we will try to use reasonable measures to protect your information in compliance with this Privacy Notice.  

 

11. UPDATES 

If we decide to make material changes to this Notice regarding privacy and/or email practices, we will notify you on our Site or by email prior to the changes taking effect, so that you are aware of the changes in advance. When an update is made, the date at the top of this page will change to reflect the date on which new content was posted.   If you do not consent with the update, please contact us.

 

12. CONTACT US

If you have questions or comments about our Privacy Notice, please contact us using the information below:  

 

Canada Veolia North America - Canada 555, Boul. René-Lévesque Quest Suite 1450 Montréal (Québec) H2Z 1B1, Canada [email protected] Attention: Privacy Officer

 

13. USE OF COOKIES AND RELATED TECHNOLOGY (COOKIE POLICY) 

We use “cookies” and related technologies to collect information when you visit our Site in order to provide a more convenient experience for you.  

 

What is a cookie?  

A cookie is a small data file containing unique identifiers that are stored, among other places, on your device when you visit a website and can later remember you when you revisit that website.  Cookies are widely used to make websites work or to work more efficiently, as well as to monitor a website’s performance using analytical information.  Certain cookies can store your information until you terminate the browser session (i.e., session cookies), whereas other cookies can permanently store your preferences for successive visits until you delete it or are deleted periodically by your browser (i.e., persistent cookies).

• Cookies set by the Company are called first-party cookies.  We use first-party cookies to provide basic functionality to our Site(s), such as logging into the system, maintaining session information, and enhancing access to the features of our Site(s).  
• Cookies set by parties other than the Company are called third-party cookies.  We use third-party cookies to enable features or functionality provided by third parties in connection with our Site for advertising, marketing, interactive content, promotion of our brand, and analytics. We allow third parties to place certain cookies on our Site, such as pixels, web beacons or clear gifs that can recognize your device when it visits our Site and/or when it visits certain other websites.  Based on your interactions with our Site or on other websites you may have visited before viewing our Site, third-party cookies may build a profile of topics that interest you and display information about us based on those interests on those other sites.  To a limited extent, we may use certain cookies to inform us if you opened an email.   
• One third-party service we use is Google Analytics, which is a service provided by Google.  Google uses the data collected to track and examine the use of our Site and may disclose this data to other Google services. You can learn more about Google Analytics and Google’s privacy practices by visiting https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. 

 

Why do we use cookies?  

The use of cookies allows us to recognize devices that interact with our Site, analyze site traffic (through plug-ins, widgets, and embedded content), and optimize your user experience. Other cookies, including third-party cookies, enable more relevant advertising and better analytics. We collect this information mainly to generate aggregate data, statistical information, and to facilitate the operation of our Site, system administration, and computer forensic investigation. Additionally, we collect this information to improve our content and content delivery on the Site, as well as your experience with our Services.

 

How can I manage my cookies or opt-out?  

You can view a list of each cookie we use and manage our collection of your data through marketing or preference cookies: 

• by using our “Cookies Policy / Do not Sell or Share” link found on the bottom footer of our Site. 
• from your browser settings or from your mobile device’s settings. (please note: Since the means by which you can disable cookies through your web browser controls vary from browser-to-browser, you should visit your browser's or mobile device's settings for instructions on how to delete or disable cookies, and other tracking/recording tools).
• through your browser’s Global Privacy Controls.

Please be advised that deleting or disabling cookies will not prevent device identification and related data collection from occurring.  If you choose to disagree with the collection of any marketing or preference cookies, your access to some functionality and areas of our Site may be restricted or it may impair your user experience.  

If you have questions or require assistance to understand this Cookie Policy, please contact our Privacy Officer at [email protected].