Dive Brief:
- Waste Management has released its 2015 Sustainability Report, which provides updated information to its 2014 "Creating a Circular Economy" report.
- The update highlights four main ways that the company is reaching a circular economy: reducing waste, growing recycling, extracting value from organics, and recovering energy from waste. "We've worked to expand our base of 'greener' service offerings such as recycling, capturing landfill gas for use as low-carbon electricity or fuel, and consulting with our customers on waste reduction, so they can create less waste in the first place," said Waste Management CEO David Steiner in the report.
- The report also highlights five company goals to reach by 2020, in the areas of recyclables managed, fleet emissions, numbers of acres protected, waste-based energy production, and number of wildlife habitat programs. WM's fleet emissions goal, number of acres protected goal, and number of wildlife habitat programs goal were all achieved in 2014.
Dive Insight:
In November, the World Economic Forum reported that a circular economy, as opposed to a linear economy, is crucial for companies to adapt if they wish to make profit. Waste Management has proved the benefits of the circular economy in its updated report.
The update allows Waste Management to give a full summary of its 2014 year, providing data on environment, operations, financials, energy, giving, landfills, and facilities. Some of the most impressive figures of 2014 include:
- 38,900 employees with 21,000,000 customers
- $14,000,000,000 in total revenue
- 3,700 alternative fuel vehicles with 72 natural gas fueling stations
- 134 landfill gas-to-energy facilities
- 119 wildlife habitat programs, with 26,000 acres of land dedicated to wildlife habitat
"It’s important to remember that the concept of a circular economy remains, after all, an 'economy,'" said Steiner in the report. "There are market forces to be reckoned with, including unpredictable externalities and shifting public demand. But there are also less tangible but real, enduring benefits. If together, we focus on the characteristics we want in a circular economy — use of fewer virgin resources, reductions in emissions, sustainable market conditions — then the relationship between markets and the environment becomes obvious."