With close to $12 billion in annual revenue, Waste Management (WM) is North America’s leading provider of integrated environmental solutions, including waste collection and disposal, transfer, recycling and energy recovery services.
Through its subsidiaries and over 45,000 employees, the company serves around 20 million residential, industrial, municipal, and commercial customers across North American customers.
Operations include:
- Landfills
- Transfer stations
- Beneficial use landfill gas projects
- Material recovery facilities
- Waste-to-energy plants
The business is shifting from its traditional waste collection and disposal emphasis towards several forms of resource recovery. In 2008, the company’s revenues were balanced between traditional collection and disposal and green services. It now diverts millions of tons of waste annually from landfills.
In 2009, Waste Management generated 10 times more megawatt-hours of energy than the U.S. solar energy industry. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, just over 800,000 megawatt-hours of power were produced from solar energy in the United States, versus 8.6 million megawatt-hours of power produced by WM’s waste-to-energy operations.
WM has been very active in its acquisition and investment strategy, having purchased controlling interests in such as Garick, which makes organic lawn and garden products, It is also involved with other technology startups including MicroGREEN Polymers, S4 Energy, Big Belly Solar, Harvest Power, Enerkem and Terrabon.