Enabling Circular Solutions

With our broad expertise and robust network of advanced facilities, WM is uniquely positioned to innovate circular solutions for a variety of commodities including organics, textiles and other hard-to-recycle materials. Through collaboration with customers, suppliers and other organizations, we uncover opportunities and advance circularity.

For example, WM supports the developing textile recycling market.

• Textile recycling facilities: At one of our facilities, we are piloting robotic, near-infrared technology which helps to sort apparel by fiber composition, color and metal presence
• Industry collaborations: WM is working with a value chain of partners and an emerging fiber-to-fiber recycler, to help streamline the process of collecting and managing textiles
• Community solutions: We are piloting post-consumer collection programs for single- and multi-family households

Expanding Recycling Access

Our sustainability investments are expanding consumer access to recycling in existing markets and entering new, high-growth population areas. WM increased recycling opportunities in various communities in 2024. Examples include:

• Fort Walton Beach, Florida: A new $30 million recycling facility which will process approximately 63,000 tons of recyclable materials annually
• Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Nearly $40 million in automation upgrades to this facility will boost its capacity to process up to 192,000 tons of material each year
• Germantown, Wisconsin: Nearly $39 million in automation upgrades to this recycling facility will result in the capacity to process more than 230,000 tons of material each year

WM is on track to invest over $1.4 billion in recycling infrastructure from 2022 to 2026.

Recovering Organic Materials

We are strategically growing our organics business to meet increasing demand from customers looking to reach their sustainability goals and adhere to increasing regulatory food waste diversion requirements.

Through continued improvements in our operations and technology, we are processing more organic material at our existing facilities and have increased organics processing capacity by 147,000 tons. In addition, two FOG2Fuel® facilities are now fully operational and converting fats, oils, and grease (FOG) from restaurants and food manufacturers into valuable feedstock for biodiesel production. In 2024, we sold the first loads of brown grease to the commodity market, providing a solution for a traditionally hard-to-manage material.