Waste Management’s (WM) CEO David Steiner recently unveiled the Houston-headquartered company’s new environmental initiative, committing the company to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to lessen its environmental impact, reports Resource Recycling.
The plans include previously-reported increased waste-to-energy production, increased volumes of recyclable materials recovered, spending $500 million per year over a 10-year period to increase fuel efficiency, a reduction in fleet emissions by 15 percent, and the addition of more of the company’s lands to certified conservation areas.
Using the year 2020 as a benchmark for some of the company’s goals, WM aims to process 20 million tons of recyclable material annually, up from eight million tons today. Its subsidiary, Recycle America, increases the volume of materials it gathers by 30 to 40 percent when it has converted to single stream collection methods.