The New York Times shines a spotlight on Houston, home to the nation’s largest waste handler in Waste Management, as well as to the worst recycling rate of any major metropolitan area in the nation.

Cheap land, a lack of political will, and an “independent streak” among the Houston populace translates into an anemic 2.6 recycling rate. Compare that to San Francisco at the opposite end of the spectrum, which recycles close to 70 percent of its waste, or New York, which is just above the national average at 34 percent.

“But city officials say real progress will be hard to come by. Landfill costs here are cheap. The city’s sprawling, no-zoning layout makes collection expensive, and there is little public support for the kind of effort it takes to sort glass, paper and plastics. And there appears to be even less for placing fees on excess trash.

‘We have an independent streak that rebels against mandates or anything that seems trendy or hyped up,’ said Mayor Bill White, who favors expanding the city’s recycling efforts. ‘Houstonians are skeptical of anything that appears to be oversold or exaggerated. But Houstonians can change, and change fast.’”



They’ll have to, lest the rest of the nation leave them behind.

Just three weeks after Republic agreed to buy Allied, the solid waste industry once again finds itself firmly in the media spotlight with yesterday’s announcement that Waste Management is seeking to scuttle the Republic-Allied deal by buying Republic. Here’s a brief round-up of what some major media outlets are saying about the offer:

Reuters: “Republic shares had been off 17 percent since word leaked of the company’s plan to bid for Allied, which created the opening Waste Management needed to offer a competing proposal, JPMorgan analyst Scott Levine wrote in a note to clients.

Republic’s strong business in Las Vegas is an especially compelling asset, said [Waste Management CEO David] Steiner, who said Waste Management hadn’t yet started to figure out how many landfills the combined company would have.”

Forbes.com: “Speaking at a Forbes conference several months ago, CEO Steiner said that one key to Waste Management’s future — and a possible driver of the Republic deal — is cornering the waste-to-energy business. With 227 landfills, the company already produces 2 gigawatts of ‘green’ power for 2 million homes. Waste Management burns trash to produce electricity, by tapping the methane produced in burning to create natural gas.”

Bloomberg.com: “Waste Management would likely borrow to pay for Republic, ‘adding considerable debt to the capital structure versus where they are today,’ Fitch analyst Stephen Brown said today in a telephone interview. ‘Equity investors are looking at the overall cost and having some concern about that.”’

The Wall Street Journal: “The three largest U.S. waste companies control more than two-thirds of the nation’s permitted landfill capacity, according to a February 2007 report by the Solid Waste Association of North America, a group of mostly municipal trash officials. A merger of $13-billion Waste Management and $3-billion Republic, in sales, would leave just under half the country’s permitted landfill capacity in the control of the combined company.”

Business Week: “A Republic-Allied deal would create a company with a market share of 17% to 18% in North America, a credible rival to Waste Management’s 24% share, according to Stewart Scharf, an equity analyst at Standard & Poor’s. But Waste Management’s Republic bid would boost its market share to 30%, putting even more distance between Waste Management and its second-place rival, Allied Waste, with a market share of 10% or 11% … Robert Lande, a law professor at the University of Baltimore and a director of the American Antitrust Institute, says by itself a 30% market share wouldn’t raise concerns—at least judging by the record of regulators in the Bush Administration. However, garbage hauling is a very local business, and the competitive landscape would need to be analyzed metropolitan area by metropolitan area, Lande says.”

Several years ago, former Vice-President Al Gore appeared on Saturday Night Live and, in a skit based on the premise that he won the 2000 election and was addressing the nation from the Oval Office, said that he had mandated that cars run on trash. The joke got a big laugh from the studio audience, surely in part because the idea seemed a little wacky.

Well, wacky may be getting closer to reality than we could have imagined then.

According to this report from a Northwestern Medill School of Journalism newspaper, Lake County, Ind., may soon be home to the “first commercial-scale plants in the country [that] turn garbage into ethanol.”

Indiana Ethanol Power LLC has submitted a proposal to the county’s Solid Waste Management District for a facility that would use a process called “weak-acid hydrolysis” to convert trash into roughly 20 million gallons of ethanol a year, the paper says. Meanwhile, Genahol-Powers 1 LLC is seeking the county’s permission to build a facility that would burn trash to produce approximately 30 million gallons of ethanol annually.

If the district approves the proposals at a June meeting, then the plants could conceivably be up and running within two years, according to the paper. However, the local Sierra Club is voicing concerns about the technology that would be used in the Genahol plant.

“It’s still kind of an old-fashioned technology,” Sandy O’Brien, chair of the Dunelands Sierra Club, told the newspaper. “They’ll be burning things they could be recycling, like plastic.”

The Lake County news comes nearly a month after Waste Management announced that it has partnered with Linde North America to develop a Northern California facility that will convert landfill gas into liquified natural gas (LNG) to fuel area collection trucks. The facility is slated to open next year and Waste Management says it will produce roughly 13,000 gallons of LNG a day.

So, what’s your take? Will this prove to be a viable end use for trash?

Filling up the gas tank for the Memorial Day weekend getaway serves as a powerful (and painful) reminder of how much commodity prices have soared in recent months. The Waste Equipment Equipment Technology Association (WASTEC) has produced a three-page “issue bulletin” that summarizes the trends and looks at the effects on both manufacturers and haulers. To download a copy of the bulletin, visit www.wastec.org and click on the “WASTEC Issues Bulletin on Materials Cost Increases” link on the right-hand side of the page.

And from all of us here at Waste Age, have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend.

The National Solid Wastes Management Association (NSWMA) has unveiled another component of its multi-pronged “Slow Down to Get Around” safety campaign. (NSWMA) has released a television ad urging motorists to drive slowly and with care when maneuvering around trash and recycling collection vehicles. The ad, which is available in a 30- and 60-second version, was created in part with support from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

According to an NSWMA press release, at least half a dozen waste collection workers have been killed during the past after being struck by a car. “Too many families have suffered the loss of a loved one through this sort of incident,” said NSWMA General Counsel David Biderman in the press release. “But we can reduce the frequency of this type of accident by educating the general public. We understand why such accidents occur. With some simple changes and better driver education, we can save many lives.”

NSWMA is encouraging private haulers and local governments to share copies of the ads with their local radio and television stations. To request a broadcast-quality copy of the ads, contact Biderman at davidb@envasns.org or (202) 364-3743.

Earlier this year, NSWMA aired “Slow Down to Get Around” radio ads in 10 cities, and the association also provides “Slow Down to Get Around” decals for haulers to place on their trucks. To request the decals, contact Niehaus at sales@niehauscorp.com or (859) 331-3733.

Barbie Nadeau of Newsweek.com has posted a top-notch account of the garbage strike that is consuming Naples, Italy. Get a load of this passage:

“As the sound rings out from hundreds of Naples’s churches it energizes the rodents scurrying frantically through the six-foot-high piles of rotting garbage festering in the streets because of a garbage strike now entering its fourth week. Stray dogs sometimes join in the feast, picking through the trash and drinking from puddles speckled with cockroach shells. If these Neapolitan trash troubles sound familiar, it’s no wonder. The Italian region of Campania has been experiencing a garbage crisis for almost 14 years, during which time little has changed beyond the contents of the overflowing bins.”

Yikes.

The article goes on to say that the European Commission is threatening Italy with sanctions and/or fines.

Can enough good things be said about “Dirty Jobs?” In a recent episode, host Mike Rowe visited a Norcal Waste Systems transfer station in San Francisco. The show included all the de rigueur gross-out moments: scooping out the leavings in the back of a garbage truck that had just deposited its load, extracting waste from the tracks of a pit bulldozer and, most alarmingly, slogging through a water and waste-filled holding area beneath the area where transfer trailers are loaded. These are tasks that barely give pause to most of our readers. My wife nearly had to leave the room.

But what struck me most was the pride in and devotion to the job displayed by every one of the workers. Moreover, each seemed to have held his or her respective position for a very long time. Rowe asked just about every worker he met how long they’d been doing what they were doing, and the answer came back 10, 20, even 30 years. Amazing.

to out-of-state landfills we go.

David Caruso of the The Associated Press has penned an overview of the issues surrounding the out-of-state disposal of municipal solid waste.

Michael Keller, a member of Fox Township, Pa.’s, Board of Supervisors, tells Caruso that while he has some concerns about what effects accepting more than 1,300 tons of garbage a day from New York City will have on the township’s landfill, the township has benefited substantially. “We’re rich,” he says in the article. “We have less than 4,000 people living here, and we have millions of dollars in the bank.”