Material is Repurposed

Through collaboration with industry leaders, including Starbucks, The Recycling Partnership, How2Recycle®, NextGen Consortium managed by Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy and municipalities nationwide, we are increasing recycling accessibility, standardizing guidelines and promoting recycling of paper and polypropylene plastic cups.

Polypropylene cups may now carry the “Widely Recyclable” label from How2Recycle®, meaning more than 60% of U.S. households can recycle these cups through their curbside pickup programs.

WM accepts these materials at our single-stream recycling facilities, bales the cups – along with other commodities of the same grade – and sells them to end markets that can remanufacture them into new products like plastic paint cans.

As extended producer responsibility (EPR) regulations reshape the landscape in certain parts of North America, WM continues to invest in infrastructure to support the needs of our customers and communities.

When Oregon’s Recycling Modernization Act took effect, requiring the use of responsible end markets for all material shipped from Oregon facilities, we were already executing on plans to invest $47 million in a state-of-the-art facility in Portland to help meet this growing need.

The facility, which opened in 2025, is helping the greater Portland area evolve its recycling practices while adding green collar jobs.

In 2025, we opened two new organics processing facilities, continued to optimize our organics processing capacity at existing facilities and pioneered innovative biosolids solutions.

Through continued improvements in our operations and expanding infrastructure, we recovered 3.8 million tons of organic material in 2025, added 90,000 tons of annual organics processing capacity and provided critical support for major municipal programs including Denver, New York City and cities across California.

Our FOG2Fuel® facilities continue to convert fats, oils and grease from restaurants and food manufacturers into valuable feedstock to produce renewable fuels, with inbound volumes growing 11% year-over-year in 2025.