1. Home
  2. News
  3. Week of Jan. 25-31, 2011
  4. Waste Management Issues Sustainability Report

Waste Management Issues Sustainability Report

Date: January 20, 2011

Source: Waste Management, Inc.

Waste Management, Inc. (Houston, TX) recently released its sustainability report for 2010 touting some successes and noting work that needs to be done. Among the former, the company said it has met its wildlife habitat goal ten years ahead of schedule having received Wildlife Habitat Council certification at 100 landfills while expanding the number of acres set aside for wildlife to 25,000. The company conceded that while it has not met its goal of zero violations, it has recorded the lowest level of violations in three years, down 28 percent from last year. "The goal of our environmental management system is to correct conditions that could lead to a violation before the violation happens," the report said.

The company boasts of being North America's largest recycler, in 2009 moving more than 8.5 million tons of material towards recycling or reuse. It aims to triple the amount of recyclable materials it manages, from a 2007 baseline, to more than 20 million tons a year by 2020. The task has been made much more difficult in the last couple of years covered in the report as the economic downturn has depressed commodity material pricing. "Fortunately, commodity markets steadily recovered through 2009 and into 2010 such that those markets are at or near their pre-October 2008 levels," the report said.

Going forward, the company said it is working to revise its recycling contracts so that customers share more risk in the weak markets and benefit more in the strong markets. The report also noted that in 2009 Waste Management produced more than 60 percent of the country's renewable energy from landfill gas and nearly 23 percent of its energy from waste-to-energy plants. "Combined, these Waste Management renewable fuels created an order of magnitude more renewable energy than that produced by the solar industry, and more than half the amount of energy produced by geothermal sources nationwide," according to the report.

Industry News & Events

Sign up to receive our free Weekly News Bulletin