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Waste Management Releases 2021 Sustainability Report
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WM
Waste Management (WM) recently released its 2021 Sustainability Report, wherein the company notes progress against its 2025 and 2038 sustainability goals around “people, customers, environment and community, including key investments made through early 2021 to further the company’s sustainability agenda.”
The report covers 2020 and early 2021 and focuses on the people behind the progress WM made over that time period, “and how they are doing their part to take care of WM’s customers, neighbors and the environment in communities across North America.”
As noted by Jim Fish, president and CEO, “For all its challenges, 2020 was a pivotal year. [But] the public learned what we at WM have always known: our industry provides an essential service to customers and communities across North America. And it’s our people on the front line—technicians, equipment operators, drivers and route managers—who make it all possible.”
In its overview of the report, WM calls out these specific impacts (among others) in its areas of focus:
People
Served customers and guaranteed pay for 40 hrs/week for all full-time hourly employees regardless of COVID-19 related service decreases
100% of employees’ and dependents’ college tuition covered through Your Tomorrow education benefit
Convened an Inclusion, Equity & Diversity (IE&D) leadership council
Customers
Embraced Customer Service Digitalization, making interactions with customers in real time
Completed acquisition of Advanced Disposal Services (ADS), adding 5,000 team members to the WM family
Environment
Aligned 2025 and 2038 goals to eight of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (good health and well-being; affordable and clean energy; decent work and economic growth; industry innovation and infrastructure; reduced inequalities; sustainable cities and communities; responsible consumption and production; climate action) to make the greatest impact
Invested over $100 million in new recycling infrastructure technology
55% of our CNG trucks are now powered by RNG (ahead of our 50% target by 2025)
Created dialogue around protecting the planet and driving change through the annual WM Sustainability Forum and a new web series, “Together Today, For Tomorrow”
Community
Provided 3 million meals, through two enterprise-wide employee match campaigns, for people experiencing food insecurity
Donated more than $15 million in charitable giving and in-kind services
In Fish’s commentary, he looks forward by saying that, “Post-pandemic, we are embracing opportunities to establish a new normal that is better than the one we had before, and that includes strengthening our focus on all aspects of sustainability.”
Tara Hemmer, WM’s chief sustainability officer was recently on the Waste360 NothingWasted! podcast and noted that, “When we were thinking about out how to frame the report, which covers the year 2020, we really [felt] that 2020 was about our people—and so the title is “The people behind our progress.” There were so many things that happened day-to-day, week-to-week, month-t0-month, thanks to our almost 50,000 employees in North America…in the most challenging year in our history…and the fact that we were able to drive significant change in our environmental framework and with our customers and communities, and of course from a social perspective with our people. [All of] that happened because there was clarity of focus around what we wanted to accomplish. Our people tackled challenges in 2020, and had to adapt to things we never really thought possible. So the fact that we made progress on inclusion, equity, and diversity; reduced fleet emissions; made progress on measuring landfill emissions; increased the recycling on plastics quite significantly with the backdrop of all the challenges…it just gives me such optimism for the future.”
View the full report here: https://sustainability.wm.com.
Listen to Hemmer’s podcast episode here:
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