Waste Management (corporation)

Waste Management, Inc. is a waste management, comprehensive waste, and environmental services company in North America. Founded in 1971, the company is headquartered in the First City Tower in Houston, Texas.

The company's network includes 367 collection operations, 346 transfer stations, 293 active landfill disposal sites, 16 waste-to-energy plants, 146 recycling plants, 111 beneficial-use landfill gas projects and six independent power production plants. Waste Management offers environmental services to nearly 27 million residential, industrial, municipal and commercial customers in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. With 26,000 collection and transfer vehicles, the company has the largest trucking fleet in the waste industry. Together with its competitor Republic Services, Inc, the two handle more than half of all garbage collection in the United States.

History

In 1971, Harm Huizenga, a Dutch immigrant, began hauling garbage at $1.25/wagon in Chicago. In 1968, Wayne Huizenga, Dean Buntrock, and Larry Beck founded Waste Management, Inc. and began aggressively purchasing many of the smaller garbage collection services across the country, as the descendant firm of Harm Huizenga. In 1971, Waste Management went public, and by 1972, the company had made 133 acquisitions with $82M in revenue. It had 60,000 commercial and industrial accounts and 600,000 residential customers in 19 states and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In the 1980s, Waste Management acquired Service Corporation of America (SCA) to become the largest waste hauler in the country.

Waste management

Waste management is all those activities and action required to manage waste from its inception to its final disposal. This includes amongst other things, collection, transport, treatment and disposal of waste together with monitoring and regulation. It also encompasses the legal and regulatory framework that relates to waste management encompassing guidance on recycling etc.

The term usually relates to all kinds of waste, whether generated during the extraction of raw materials, the processing of raw materials into intermediate and final products, the consumption of final products, or other human activities, including municipal (residential, institutional, commercial), agricultural, and special (health care, household hazardous wastes, sewage sludge). Waste management is intended to reduce adverse effects of waste on health, the environment or aesthetics.

Waste management practices are not uniform among countries (developed and developing nations); regions (urban and rural area), and sectors (residential and industrial).

Waste management (disambiguation)

Waste management may refer to:

See also:

Waste management in Bangladesh

Bangladesh is the ninth most populous country and twelfth most densely populated countries in the world . In particular, the projected urban population growth rate from 2010 - 2015 is 3%. With this population growth, there is an increasing problem of waste management particularly in the larger cities. Currently, according to an UNFPA report, Dhaka is one of the most polluted cities in the world and one of the issues concerned is the management of municipal waste.

Trend of urban waste creation in Bangladesh

Current (2012) waste generation in Bangladesh is around 22.4 million tonnes per year or 150 kg/cap/year.  

There is an increasing rate of waste generation in Bangladesh and it is projected to reach 47, 064 tonnes per day by 2025. The Waste Generation Rate (kg/cap/day) is expected to increase to 0.6 in 2025. A significant percentage of the population has zero access to proper waste disposal services, which will in effect lead to the problem of waste mismanagement.