Waste Management CEO David Steiner Talks Recycling

“On many days it just looks like a load of garbage,” says David Steiner, CEO of Waste Management, referencing the company’s recycling processing plant in Houston. It is a loud, stinky, dusty, 40,000-square-foot Rube Goldberg machine that handles 300 tons a day. Material flies from one conveyor belt to another. Magnets pull off steel cans. Screens skim up cardboard and paper. Optical sensors trigger air puffers that pop bottles into the right chutes.

Not all of it gets recycled; about 15% of the stuff citizens put in their recycling bins should have gone in the garbage can. Workers wearing bandannas against the dust stand along the conveyor belt handpicking items. “People mean well,” Steiner says.