Waste Management’s Five-year Recycling Investments Expected to Exceed $700 Million By 2022
November 15 2021 - 7:00AM
Business Wire
WM Plans $200 Million in New Recycling
Investments Next Year
Waste Management (NYSE: WM) today announced it expects to
invest $200 million in recycling infrastructure in 2022, bringing
the company’s investment in new and upgraded recycling facilities
to over $700 million since 2018. With the demand for recycled
content products continuing to rise, the investment will enable WM
to capture more recycled materials and increase access to recycling
for its customers.
Over the past two years, WM has opened new materials recovery
facilities (MRFs) in Chicago, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, N.C., and
Sun Valley, Calif. These facilities include state-of-the-art
recycling technologies – such as robotics, intelligent sorting,
volumetric scanners, cameras on collection vehicles to further
reduce contamination. By 2023, WM plans to outfit 95 percent of its
residential recycling facilities with updated recycling technology,
further enabling and enhancing the company’s ability to provide
high-quality recycled commodities to its customers. WM’s Chicago
facility was named the National Waste and Recycling Association
(NWRA) 2021 Recycling Facility of the Year and served as the pilot
location for the technology.
“As consumer-packaged goods companies continue to set aggressive
2025 and 2030 goals for recycled content – in many cases
approaching 50 percent – solutions need to scale, especially
related to plastics, as plastic capture must grow five times to
meet these targets,” said Tara Hemmer, senior vice president and
chief sustainability officer, WM. “We are making great progress
unlocking this supply, increasing overall recycled plastic volume
by 25 percent since 2019 and this will continue to expand. These
enhancements will ensure recyclables are efficiently sorted and
sold to high-quality end markets, meeting the strong demand for
recycled content material in new products.”
WM also expects to upgrade much of its remaining recycling
facility network. MRFs in Houston, Cleveland, Woodinville, Wash.,
and Elkridge, Md., are being fully renovated, and 29 existing MRFs
have already been or are currently being outfitted with enhanced
technology as well as supplemental capacity.
These recycling investments play an important role in WM’s
commitment to sustainability, contributing to WM’s support of the
circular economy, while helping WM customers achieve recycling and
environmental goals. Since 2019, recycling of specific types of
plastic such as polypropylene (#5 PP) has increased by as much as
40 percent, including items such as shampoo and medicine bottles,
yogurt cups, skin care lotions and deodorant containers.
The announcement follows the release of the WM 2021
Sustainability Report, where the company noted achievements
including how WM implemented employee uniforms made of Unifi’s
REPREVE fiber, woven with recycled plastic; exceeded its 2025 goal
to have more than half of its compressed natural gas fleet powered
by RNG; and expanded its Your Tomorrow benefit paying for education
and upskilling opportunities for both employees and their
dependents starting in 2022.
Visit WM’s sustainability website at
https://sustainability.wm.com/ to learn more about how the company
is always working for a sustainable tomorrow.
ABOUT WASTE MANAGEMENT
WM (Waste Management) is the leading provider of comprehensive
environmental services in North America. Through its subsidiaries,
WM provides collection, transfer, disposal services, and recycling
and resource recovery. It is also a leading developer, operator,
and owner of landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United
States. To learn more information about WM, please visit
wm.com.
FORWARD-LOOKING
STATEMENTS
Waste Management, from time to time, provides estimates,
comments on expectations relating to future periods and makes
statements of opinion, view or belief about current and future
events. This press release contains such forward-looking
statements, including all statements regarding the amount and
timing of future investment in recycling infrastructure; results of
such investments; timing and nature of enhancements to recycling
facilities; future volume, demand and outlets for recycled
material; and all other statements pertaining to future business
performance, operations or results. You should view these
statements with caution. They are based on the facts and
circumstances as of the date the statements are made and are
subject to risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results
to be materially different, including but not limited to, failure
to implement our optimization, growth, and cost savings initiatives
and overall business strategy; competing capital allocation needs;
impacts of COVID-19 and related regulations; macroeconomic
pressures and market disruption resulting in labor, supply chain
and transportation constraints and inflationary cost pressure;
increased competition; pricing actions; commodity price
fluctuations; international trade restrictions; disposal
alternatives; weakness in general economic conditions; failure to
develop and protect new technology; and failure of technology to
perform as expected. Please also see Part I, Item 1A of Waste
Management’s most recently filed Annual Report on Form 10-K, as
supplemented by subsequent Form 10-Qs, available on the “Investors”
page of www.wm.com, for additional information regarding these and
other risks and uncertainties. The Company assumes no obligation to
update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of future
events, circumstances or developments or otherwise.
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211115005164/en/
Janette Micelli
jmicelli@wm.com
Waste Management (NYSE:WM)
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