History
In 1893, Harm Huizenga, a Dutch immigrant, began hauling garbage at $1.25/wagon in Chicago. [7] In 1968, Harm's grandson Wayne Huizenga, Dean Buntrock, and Larry Beck founded Waste Management, Inc. and began aggressively purchasing many of the smaller garbage collection services across the country. In 1971, Waste Management went public, and by 1972, the company had made 133 acquisitions with $82 million in revenue. It had 60,000 commercial and industrial accounts and 600,000 residential customers in 19 states and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In the 1980s, Waste Management acquired Service Corporation of America (SCA) to become the largest waste hauler in the country.
Between the years of 1976 and 1997, the executive officers of Waste Management, Inc. began "cooking" the accounting books by refusing to record expenses necessary to write off the costs of unsuccessful and abandoned landfill development projects; establishing inflated environmental reserves (liabilities) in connection with acquisitions so that the excess reserves could be used to avoid recording unrelated operating expenses, improperly capitalizing a variety of expenses; failing to establish sufficient reserves (liabilities) to pay for income taxes and other expenses; avoiding depreciation expenses on their garbage trucks by both assigning unsupported and inflating salvage values and extending their useful lives; assigned arbitrary salvage values to other assets that previously had no salvage value; failed to record expenses for decreases in the value of landfills as they were filled with waste, used netting to eliminate approximately $490 million in current period operating expenses and accumulated prior period accounting misstatements by offsetting them against unrelated one-time gains on the sale or exchange of assets; and used geography entries to move tens of millions of dollars between various line items on the company's income statement. [8] Officers were accused of making "the financials look the way we want to show them." The top officers settled with the federal government for $30.8 million in 2005, without admitting guilt. [9]
When a new CEO took charge of the company in 1997, he ordered a review of the company's accounting practices in 1997. In 1998 Waste Management restated its 1992–1997 earnings by $1.7 billion, making it the largest restatement in history.
In 1998 Waste Management merged with USA Waste Services, Inc. USA Waste Services CEO John E. Drury retained the chairmanship and CEO position of the combined company. Waste Management then relocated its headquarters from Chicago to Houston. The merged company retained the Waste Management brand. In late 1999, John Drury stepped down as chairman due to brain surgery. Rodney R. Proto then took the position of chairman and CEO. That year also brought trouble for the newly expanded company in the form of an accounting scandal.
In November 1999, turn-around CE was brought in to help Waste Management recover. The company has since implemented new technologies, safety standards, and operational practices. [10]
On July 14, 2008, Waste Management offered a $34 per share all-cash bid to acquire arch-competitor Republic Services, Inc. [11] [12] On August 11, 2008, the bid was raised to $37 per share. On August 15, 2008, Republic Services, Inc. denied Waste Management's bid for a second time. On October 13, 2008, Waste Management withdrew its bid for Republic Services, citing financial market turmoil. [13]
In January 2009, a global economic crisis forced Waste Management to aggressively reduce and restructure its corporate workforce.
In 2015, Winters Brothers assumed all of WM's operations in Connecticut and New York (excluding New York City, and continues to service these regions under contract with WM. [14]
Rebranding to WM
In February 2022, Waste Management announced the company would be rebranding to be referred to simply as WM. This came with an increased emphasis on sustainability and environmental services, and not just waste collection and disposal. [4] [5]
Corporate issues
1995 lawsuit
Shareholders sued Wheelabrator Technologies's (WTI) board of directors for breach of their fiduciary duty, challenging the merger of WTI into Waste Management. In 1995, the case, In re Wheelabrator Technologies, Inc. Shareholders Litigation, came before the Court of Chancery of Delaware on an appeal regarding the Board's motion for summary judgment. The shareholders argued the Board breached their duty of care because there was not sufficient process, they didn't look at alternative transactions, didn't consider information regarding waste's legal liabilities, they didn't appoint a committee of independent directors to negotiate the merger, and they didn't adequately consider the terms of the merger; they breached their duty of loyalty, and; they breached their duty to disclose relevant information regarding the merger. Ultimately, the court dismissed the duty of disclosure claim but allowed the duty of loyalty claim to a degree. In regards to the duty of loyalty claim, the court disagreed with both the shareholders and the Board. It labelled the merger as an interested transaction, not a controlled shareholder transaction, so the business judgment rule applies and the burden to prove waste is on the shareholders. [23] [24]
Accounting improprieties
Revelations of irregular accounting led to a major drop in stock price and to the replacement of top executives after a new CEO ordered a review of the company's accounting practices in 1998. Waste Management's shareholders lost more than $6 billion in the market value of their investments when the stock price plummeted by more than 33%. [9] The company had augmented the depreciation time length for their property, plant, and equipment, artificially inflating the company's after-tax profits by US$1.7 billion. On July 8, 1999, a class action lawsuit was filed against WMI and certain officers for issuing false statements. Waste Management paid US$457 million to settle a shareholder class-action suit in 2003. The SEC fined Waste Management's independent auditor, Arthur Andersen, US$7 million for its role. [25] [26]
ERP software implementation failure
In 2005, Waste Management entered into a Software Licensing Agreement (SLA) with SAP AG. Under the agreement, SAP and its wholly owned subsidiary, Tomorrow Now, were to implement SAP's Enterprise Resource Planning software. The implementation began when an eight month pilot program was established in Waste Management's New Mexico market area, the market-share area at the time. This initial implementation was to be followed in two months with a company-wide implementation from Waste Management's headquarters in Houston, Texas. [27]
In December 2007, Waste Management ended their ERP implementation effort. Waste Management characterized the ERP implementation as non-functional. An SAP sponsored "Solution Review" determined that a customized ERP, based upon an updated SAP ERP, would need to be made in order to accommodate a company-wide implementation.
Waste Management sued SAP for the US$100 million to recover the funds it had spent on the failed ERP implementation. [28] In the lawsuit, Waste Management accused SAP of fraud and deception. SAP countered that Waste Management failed to present knowledgeable workers and accurate business models and failed to migrate data from legacy systems. The suit concluded in 2010 under confidential terms and a one time payment from SAP to Waste Management disclosed to the SEC. [29]
Environmental policy and record
In 1990, the board of Waste Management adopted an environmental policy, including a policy of no-net-loss of biodiversity on the company’s properties. [33] [34] Waste Management also took positions around that time supporting legislation on hazardous waste reduction (1988), [35] waste export control (1989), [36] and protection of endangered species (1992). [37]
Waste Management's operations consist of environmental protection, groundwater protection, environmental engineering, and air and gas management. Waste Management currently operates ten full-scale waste treatment landfill projects in the U.S. and Canada. As a member of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX), Waste Management made a commitment during the pilot phase to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by four percent below the average of its 1998–2001 baseline by 2006. [38] They have also replaced nearly 500 diesel-fueled trucks with vehicles that run on 100 percent natural gas. These new garbage and recycling trucks comprise one of the nation's largest fleets of heavy-duty trucks powered exclusively by natural gas. [39]
In November 2009, at Waste Management's Altamont Landfill, a new plant began producing 13,000 gallons a day of LNG fuel from methane gas from the landfill that had fueled an electric power plant since 1969. Waste Management has said that the plant, announced in April 2008, and built and operated by The Linde Group with state funding, is the world's largest facility to convert landfill gas into vehicle fuel. [40] [41] [42]
Waste Management works with environmental groups in the U.S. to set aside land to create and manage wetlands and wildlife habitats. The company's landfills currently provide approximately 21,000 acres (85 km2) of protected land for wildlife; 73 landfills are certified [43] by the Wildlife Habitat Council.
In May 2011, Waste Management's Wheelabrator division agreed to pay a record $7.5 million settlement with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for a host of environmental violations at its plants in North Andover, Saugus, and Millbury, Massachusetts. The settlement was announced on May 2, 2011 by the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection and Attorney General Martha Coakley's office. [44]
Waste management or waste disposal includes the processes and actions required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes the collection, transport, treatment, and disposal of waste, together with monitoring and regulation of the waste management process and waste-related laws, technologies, and economic mechanisms.
A landfill site, also known as a tip, dump, rubbish dump, garbage dump, trash dump, or dumping ground, is a site for the disposal of waste materials. Landfill is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of the waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, refuse was simply left in piles or thrown into pits; in archeology this is known as a midden.
Incineration is a waste treatment process that involves the combustion of substances contained in waste materials. Industrial plants for waste incineration are commonly referred to as waste-to-energy facilities. Incineration and other high-temperature waste treatment systems are described as "thermal treatment". Incineration of waste materials converts the waste into ash, flue gas and heat. The ash is mostly formed by the inorganic constituents of the waste and may take the form of solid lumps or particulates carried by the flue gas. The flue gases must be cleaned of gaseous and particulate pollutants before they are dispersed into the atmosphere. In some cases, the heat that is generated by incineration can be used to generate electric power.
Extended producer responsibility (EPR) is a strategy to add all of the estimated environmental costs associated with a product throughout the product life cycle to the market price of that product, contemporarily mainly applied in the field of waste management. Such societal costs are typically externalities to market mechanisms, with a common example being the impact of cars.
A materials recovery facility, materials reclamation facility, materials recycling facility or multi re-use facility is a specialized plant that receives, separates and prepares recyclable materials for marketing to end-user manufacturers. Generally, there are two different types: clean and dirty materials recovery facilities.
Electronic waste recycling, electronics recycling, or e-waste recycling is the disassembly and separation of components and raw materials of waste electronics; when referring to specific types of e-waste, the terms like computer recycling or mobile phone recycling may be used. Like other waste streams, reuse, donation, and repair are common sustainable ways to dispose of IT waste.
Municipal solid waste (MSW), commonly known as trash or garbage in the United States and rubbish in Britain, is a waste type consisting of everyday items that are discarded by the public. "Garbage" can also refer specifically to food waste, as in a garbage disposal; the two are sometimes collected separately. In the European Union, the semantic definition is 'mixed municipal waste,' given waste code 20 03 01 in the European Waste Catalog. Although the waste may originate from a number of sources that has nothing to do with a municipality, the traditional role of municipalities in collecting and managing these kinds of waste have produced the particular etymology 'municipal.'
Waste-to-energy (WtE) or energy-from-waste (EfW) is the process of generating energy in the form of electricity and/or heat from the primary treatment of waste, or the processing of waste into a fuel source. WtE is a form of energy recovery. Most WtE processes generate electricity and/or heat directly through combustion, or produce a combustible fuel commodity, such as methane, methanol, ethanol or synthetic fuels, often derived from the product syngas.
The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (SWACO) was established by the Ohio General Assembly in 1989 as part of Ohio House Bill 592, which created Ohio’s current solid waste management planning and regulatory programs. SWACO is a government-run entity responsible for the safe and sanitary management of all solid waste within its district. In this role, it operates the Franklin County Sanitary Landfill, as well as two transfer facilities, all for the benefit of Franklin County, Ohio, and parts of surrounding counties in central Ohio.
There is no national law in the United States that mandates recycling. State and local governments often introduce their own recycling requirements. In 2014, the recycling/composting rate for municipal solid waste in the U.S. was 34.6%. A number of U.S. states, including California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, Oregon, and Vermont have passed laws that establish deposits or refund values on beverage containers while other jurisdictions rely on recycling goals or landfill bans of recyclable materials.
Sanitary engineering, also known as public health engineering or wastewater engineering, is the application of engineering methods to improve sanitation of human communities, primarily by providing the removal and disposal of human waste, and in addition to the supply of safe potable water. Traditionally a branch of civil engineering and now a subset of environmental engineering, in the mid-19th century, the discipline concentrated on the reduction of disease, then thought to be caused by miasma. This was accomplished mainly by the collection and segregation of sewerage flow in London specifically, and Great Britain generally. These and later regulatory improvements were reported in the United States as early as 1865.
Allied Waste Industries, Inc. was a Fortune 500 company headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. A vertically integrated company that owned and operated solid waste collection businesses, recycling facilities, and landfills, it was a leader in the solid waste industry in the United States. It served more than 10 million residential, commercial and industrial customers across 128 major markets in 37 states and Puerto Rico.
In the densely populated Hong Kong, waste is a complex issue. The territory generates around 6.4 million tons of waste each year but is able to collect and process only a minimal portion of recyclable waste. By 2019, its existing landfills are expected to be full. The government has introduced waste management schemes and is working to educate the public on the subject. On the commercial side, producers are taking up measures to reduce waste.
Republic Services, Inc. is a North American waste disposal company whose services include non-hazardous solid waste collection, waste transfer, waste disposal, recycling, and energy services. It is the second largest provider of waste disposal in the United States after Waste Management.
Waste management in Japan today emphasizes not just the efficient and sanitary collection of waste, but also reduction in waste produced and recycling of waste when possible. This has been influenced by its history, particularly periods of significant economic expansion, as well as its geography as a mountainous country with limited space for landfills. Important forms of waste disposal include incineration, recycling and, to a smaller extent, landfills and land reclamation. Although Japan has made progress since the 1990s in reducing waste produced and encouraging recycling, there is still further progress to be made in reducing reliance on incinerators and the garbage sent to landfills. Challenges also exist in the processing of electronic waste and debris left after natural disasters.
Solid waste policy in the United States is aimed at developing and implementing proper mechanisms to effectively manage solid waste. For solid waste policy to be effective, inputs should come from stakeholders, including citizens, businesses, community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, government agencies, universities, and other research organizations. These inputs form the basis of policy frameworks that influence solid waste management decisions. In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulates household, industrial, manufacturing, and commercial solid and hazardous wastes under the 1976 Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA). Effective solid waste management is a cooperative effort involving federal, state, regional, and local entities. Thus, the RCRA's Solid Waste program section D encourages the environmental departments of each state to develop comprehensive plans to manage nonhazardous industrial and municipal solid waste.
Waste management in Russia refers to the legislation, actions and processes pertaining to the management of the various waste types encountered throughout the Russian Federation. The basis of legal governance for waste management in Russia at the federal level is outlined through Federal Law No. 89-FZ, which defines waste as “the remains of raw materials, materials, semi-finished products, other articles or products that have been formed in the process of production or consumption as well as the goods (products) that have lost their consumer properties”.
Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA) is a public agency in Atlantic County, New Jersey, that is responsible for enhancing quality of life through the protection of waters and lands from pollution by providing responsible waste management services.
Turkey generates about 30 million tons of solid municipal waste per year; the annual amount of waste generated per capita amounts to about 400 kilograms. According to Waste Atlas, Turkey's waste collection coverage rate is 77%, whereas its unsound waste disposal rate is 69%. While the country has a strong legal framework in terms of laying down common provisions for waste management, the implementation process has been considered slow since the beginning of 1990s.
Waste management in South Korea involves waste generation reduction and ensuring maximum recycling of the waste. This includes the appropriate treatment, transport, and disposal of the collected waste. South Korea's Waste Management Law was established in 1986, replacing the Environmental Protection Law (1963) and the Filth and Cleaning Law (1973). This new law aimed to reduce general waste under the waste hierarchy in South Korea. This Waste Management Law imposed a volume-based waste fee system, effective for waste produced by both household and industrial activities.
US$20.426 Billion (Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2023) [1] 
