Privacy Notice

Last updated: [December 2022]

[VEOLIA ENVIRONNEMENT SA] and its subsidiaries and aﬃliates in China (collectively “Veolia” or “we”) respect your right to privacy and protect your personal information. This Privacy Notice explains how we collect, share and use your personal information, and how you can exercise your data subject rights, when you use our website www.veolia.cn (together referred to as “Services”).

1) What personal information does Veolia process and why?

We may process the following personal information from you, when you use our Services:

Personal information that you provide to us voluntarily

If you contact us for any enquiries or for any other purposes via the contact information listed on our website or our social media accounts, or submit any enquiry to us via the “contact us” section in the website, we may collect your name, phone number, home address, your social media account, the email address, the postal address, and the company you work for and other information about you that you provide to us, so that we are able to understand and respond to your enquiries or any other requests.

Personal information of minors

Our products and services are not targeted at minors, and we usually do not collect the personal information of minors. If you are minors under 18 but above 14, please read and consent to this Privacy Notice under the guidance of your parents or other guardians. If you find us collecting and processing (unintentionally) the personal information of minors under 14 without the consent of their parents or other guardians, please contact us as stated in “10. How to contact us” below and we will delete such information in a timely manner.

If we plan to collect and process the personal information of minors under 14 in certain scenarios, we will at that time fully notify, and obtain consent (unless another legal basis exists) from, the minors and their parents or guardians.

Information that we collect automatically

When you visit our website, we may use cookies and similar technology to collect certain information about you automatically from you and the devices you use to improve the quality and relevance of our website to our visitors.

Speciﬁcally, the information we collect automatically may include your IP address, device type, unique device identiﬁcation numbers (device ID), browser-type, general geographic location (e.g. country or city-level location), and other technical information. We may also collect information about how your device has interacted with our website, including the pages accessed and links clicked.

This information may be collected using cookies and similar tracking technology, as explained further under our “Cookies Policy”.

Sensitive personal information (highlighted in bold)

Sensitive personal information includes biometric identification, religious belief, specific identity, medical health, financial account and whereabouts and tracks, as well as the personal information of minors under the age of 14, etc.

We do not target your sensitive personal information. However, in case we do collect or process your sensitive personal information from time to time for purposes of providing Services to you, we will inform you of the necessity of processing your sensitive personal information and the impact on your personal rights and interests, except for the circumstances that may be exempted from informing the individual of such information in accordance with the law and obtain your separate consent (if applicable). We will process your sensitive personal information only for a specific purpose and sufficient necessity, and provided that strict protection measures have been taken.

In general, we will process the personal information we collect from you as mentioned above only for the purposes of providing Services to you or others described in this Privacy Notice or for purposes that we explain to you at the time we are seeking for your separate consent.

2) Under which circumstances can Veolia process your personal information?

We will only process your personal information under one of the following circumstances:

With your prior consent;
it is necessary for Veolia to conclude or preform a contract to which you are a party;
it is necessary for Veolia to perform the statutory duties or statutory obligations;
it is necessary for Veolia to respond to a public health emergency or to protect the life, health and property safety of any individual;
such acts as news reporting and supervision by public opinions are carried out for the public interest, and the processing of personal information is within a reasonable scope;
it is necessary to process the personal information disclosed by you or other personal information that has been legally disclosed within a reasonable scope in accordance with the laws; and
Other circumstances prescribed by laws and administrative regulations.

The processing of personal information should be subject to your consent in accordance with relevant laws, however, your consent is not required under the circumstances set forth in Items (2) to (7) of the preceding paragraph.

3) Whom does Veolia share your personal information with?

We may disclose your personal information to the following categories of third-party data recipients only under necessary circumstances:

to our group companies that will process your personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Notice;
to our third party services providers and business partners who provide products and/or services to us (for example, third parties that host the website or that are involved in managing the content or other matters of the website), or who otherwise process personal information for purposes that are described in this Privacy Notice. Unless for purposes of providing products and/or services to us or otherwise provided in this Privacy Notice, our third-party services providers and business partners are not allowed to retain, use or disclose your personal information. As we may from time to time choose and change different service providers and business partners, if you are interested to know further details of such third parties, please contact us as stated in “10. How to contact us?” below.
to any competent law enforcement body, regulatory, government agency, court or other third party where we are required to comply with any applicable law or regulation, enforcement orders or other compulsory obligations. We may conduct such disclosures with or without obtaining your consent, subject to the authorities’ approval;
to a potential buyer (and its agents and advisers) in connection with any proposed purchase, merger or acquisition of any part of our business, provided that we inform the buyer it must use your personal information only for the purposes disclosed in this Privacy Notice;
to any other person with your separate consent to the disclosure for the purpose that we will inform you before disclosure.

4) How does Veolia keep your personal information secure?

We use appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect the personal information that we collect and process about you. The measures we use are designed to provide a level of security appropriate to the risk of processing your personal information.

5) How does Veolia store and how long does Veolia store your personal information?

We will store the personal information that we collect from you in accordance with applicable Chinese laws and regulations. Unless otherwise required by applicable laws and regulations, we will store your personal information for a period of time as below:

We will retain the personal information we collect from you where we have an ongoing legitimate reasons to do so (for example, to provide you with a service you have requested or to comply with applicable legal, tax or accounting requirements).
When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information or the statutory retention period under Chinese laws and regulations expires, we will either delete or anonymize it.

In spite of the above, we will store your personal information for the minimum period necessary for achieving the purpose of processing.

We will delete your personal information under the following circumstances:

the purpose of processing has been achieved, or it is impossible to achieve such purpose, or it is no longer necessary to achieve such purpose;
Veolia ceases to provide Services for you, or the retention period has expired;
you withdraw your consent;
Veolia processes your personal information in violation of laws and regulations;
other circumstances stipulated by laws and administrative regulations.

If (i) the retention period as stipulated by laws and administrative regulations does not expire, or (ii) the deletion of personal information is difficult to be realized technically, Veolia will stop the processing other than storage and necessary security protection measures.

6) Cross-border transfer of your personal information

For the purposes of this Privacy Notice (please refer to “3. Whom does Veolia share your personal information with?” for details), Veolia may transfer some of your personal information to our affiliates or third parties that may be located in other countries or regions outside China in accordance with the requirements and procedures under applicable Chinese laws and regulations.

We will require such data recipients to take appropriate measures to protect your personal information at a level that is equivalent to the personal protection aﬀorded by Chinese laws and regulations, and to process your personal information pursuant to this Privacy Notice.

7) Your Rights

You are entitled to any statutory data subject rights provided under Chinese laws.

You have the right to know and make decisions on what type of and how your personal information will be processed, and the right to restrict or refuse other (including Veolia) to process your personal information.
You also have the right to access, check and make a copy of your personal information stored or processed by Veolia.
You can request Veolia to correct or supplement your personal information stored by us when you find your personal information processed by Veolia is not correct or complete.
You also have the right to ask us to transfer your personal information we have collected and stored to other personal information processors.
You can request Veolia to delete your personal information in the abovementioned circumstances (in section 5).
You may get more details on the content of your rights and how to exercise your rights as mentioned above by contacting us using the contact details provided in the section “How to contact us”, and request us to explain the rules for processing your personal information. We respond to all requests we receive from individuals in accordance with the required time period and other requirements under applicable data protection laws.
You also have the right to withdraw your consent anytime. You understand that your withdrawal of your consent may affect your use of Services afterwards as the processing of some types of your personal information is essential for us to provide Services to you.
You can file a complaint to competent authorities or courts if you believe our processing activities infringe your personal information rights and interests.

8) Updates of this Privacy Notice

We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time in response to changing legal, technology or business developments. When we update our Privacy Notice, we will take appropriate measures to inform you, consistent with the signiﬁcance of the changes we make.

You can see when this Privacy Notice was last updated by checking the “last updated” date displayed at the top of this Privacy Notice.

9) Direct marketing and Links to other websites

You may receive marketing communications from us and you have the right to opt-out of any marketing communications we send you at any time. You can exercise this right by clicking on the “unsubscribe” or “opt-out” link in the marketing e-mails we send you. To opt-out of other forms of marketing (such as postal marketing or telemarketing), then please contact us using the contact details provided under the “How to contact us?” section below.

If you use our websites or mobile applications, there may be advertisements or hyperlinks linking to another website. If you click on any of these advertisements or hyperlinks, you will leave our websites or mobile applications for another location. At any other website or mobile application, the protection of your personal information is not our responsibility and you are advised to refer to the privacy policy of that other location (if any).

10) How to contact us?

If you have any questions or concerns about our use of your personal information or regarding this Privacy Notice, please contact us using the following details: [[email protected]]

We will try to respond to your requests as soon as possible within 15 working days after verifying your identity. We may not respond to your request if it is ungrounded, unreasonable, malicious or illegal, or if we are otherwise permitted or required by relevant laws and regulations.