Date: January 28, 2008
Source: Waste Management, Inc.
Waste Management Launches Interactive Educational Web Site
Thinkgreen.com offers the public a look inside landfills, recycling operations and environmentally friendly waste handling technology
Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE: WMI) today launched thinkgreen.com, an interactive Web site that supports Waste Management's ongoing efforts to educate the public about what happens to its waste. The project is designed to inform people about things they should know, but probably don't, about the business of managing the four-and-a-half pounds of waste the average citizen generates each day. The interactive site, which tells the story of garbage from the curbside onward, highlights how advanced technologies are recovering resources and protecting the environment.
"We want to pull back the curtain and reverse the way the public thinks about waste. This is a tremendous opportunity for the public to learn more about our operations and the ways modern practices are protecting and enhancing the environment," said David Steiner, CEO. "Our goal is to not only be a waste collection and disposal company, but an industry leader that invests resources in the development of environmentally smart ways to manage waste. Where others see waste, we see opportunity."
Thinkgreen.com takes people beyond the company's signature green garbage trucks and into fully interactive tours filled with animation and easy-to-understand information. The site features a landfill tour in three dimensions and allows viewers to explore the ways in which Waste Management reduces, reuses, recycles and recovers the resources that are in waste.
Thinkgreen.com enables users to explore the ways Waste Management generates renewable energy, boosts recycling, and protects the environment. Visitors can learn about the process of collecting landfill gas to generate renewable energy, walk through a waste-to-energy facility, and learn more about recovering more recyclable resources than ever before through modern single-stream recycling. The Web site also shows visitors how landfills safely manage waste and can benefit communities by serving as wildlife habitats and recreational spaces.
Thinkgreen.com is a continuation of the Think Green(R) campaign, begun as a television and print advertising campaign in 2005. This Web-based addition to the program includes on-line advertising and television tags to drive users to thinkgreen.com. Next month, another component of the campaign will be launched at INNOVENTIONS at Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort. There, guests visiting the INNOVENTIONS pavilion will have the opportunity to virtually experience the operations on a single-stream recycling line, feed the boiler at a waste-to-energy facility and run the bulldozer at a landfill in a hands-on, interactive exhibit called "Don't Waste It." In a fun and entertaining way, families will have the ability to calculate the amount of garbage they produce in a year and then have the responsibility to dispose of it safely and in ways that enhance the environment.
"All of these projects demonstrate how Waste Management achieves Think Green(R) in its day-to-day business," explains Dave Aardsma, Waste Management's Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing. "We hope everyone who generates waste - and that's certainly most of us - takes a self-guided tour of our virtual facilities so that they understand what Waste Management is doing for the environment."
For more information about this unique web experience, visit www.thinkgreen.com.
About Waste Management
Waste Management, based in Houston, Texas, is the leading provider of comprehensive waste management services in North America. Our subsidiaries provide collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. We are also a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy facilities in the United States. Our customers include residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers throughout North America. More information and how Waste Management achieves Think Green(R) can be found at wm.com.
About INNOVENTIONS at Epcot
INNOVENTIONS is located in the heart of Epcot at the Walt Disney World Resort in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Creativity and imagination abound as guests celebrate inspiration and the innovations that improve their lives and expand their horizons. Hands-on, interactive exhibits allow children and adults to be immersed into ideas that inform, entertain and inspire - conquer the "most dangerous house" in America, find solutions to "sticky" problems, experience the most cutting-edge products at the "House of the Future", protect the environment from the daily waste we create and push the limits of everyday products as they make the world a safer place. For more information about INNOVENTIONS, contact: Stacia Wake, 407-560-1816 or Stacia.L.Wake@disney.com.
For more information please contact:
Lynn Brown, VP Corporate Communications
Waste Management
713-394-5093
www.thinkgreen.com
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