Waste Management Inc. (WM), the biggest trash hauler in the U.S., estimates the $12.3 billion it gets for carting off rubbish to landfills may be worth more than $40 billion a year in energy.
That’s the value of fuel and chemicals the Houston-based company estimates could be extracted from the 112 million tons of trash it collected last year if the entire waste stream was diverted from landfills, said Carl Rush, senior vice president of Waste Management’s Organic Growth unit.
About 82 percent of that rubbish currently is put into dumps. Since 2009, Waste Management has bought stakes in eight companies that gasify, ferment or digest trash, turning it into a source of heat, power, transportation fuel and specialty chemicals. All of it is worth more than trash buried underground.
“We don’t think the future, long term, is going to be continuing to put everything in the landfill,” Rush said in an interview. “It’s going to be recovering more value from this material. The customers will demand it, the struggle for resources will demand it, and quite honestly, economically, it’s the thing we should be doing.”
About 92 million tons of the garbage that Waste Management hauled away last year ended up in dumps, with collection, landfill and transfer operations generating $12.3 billion inrevenue. The company’s total 2011 revenue of $13.4 billion includes a $2 billion reduction for intercompany payments.
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