EnviroPolitics Blog

If we’re in a recession, waste and recycling companies apparently didn’t get the message

Questions about what’s next for the U.S. economy are top of mind lately for business leaders.

Black trash bin next to blue recycling bin, which has lid propped open — MattGush via Getty Images

By Cole Rosengren, Maria Rachal, Megan Quinn, Waste Dive

The waste and recycling industry, like other industries, has experienced tight labor availability, rising fuel costs, and significant equipment delays. Facing those economic pressures, major companies in some other industries have cut guidance during the second-quarter earnings cycle.

Yet waste companies almost universally raised their 2022 guidance this quarter, with varying degrees of optimism about their ability to weather whatever may be coming next — recession or otherwise — and capitalize. And a newly released July jobs report showed strong signs for the economy. Here’s what top executives had to say about their economic expectations for the near future.

Tracking the waste and recycling industry’s mergers and acquisitions boom

The amount of acquisition spending and consolidation is rivaling historic levels. Follow along with Waste Dive’s running list of dozens of deals from throughout the U.S.

WM

WM CEO Jim Fish, speaking during the earnings call on July 27, said special waste from industrial activity as well as C&D (which is a much smaller piece of the company’s business) could both be leading indicators of a downturn, but neither is showing signs of softening in the months ahead. Fish also noted that a recent report from the company’s 16 area vice presidents gave little to no indication of overall waste volumes slowing down in July.

Overall, Fish described some 75% of the company’s business as resilient to a downturn. Executives also expressed confidence about maintaining pricing trends if that occurs.

“I do think there is a recession coming. I’m not going to kind of buck the trend there because everybody is saying there’s one coming. But I just feel like we’re in a great industry to weather the storm and, ultimately, with some of the things we’re doing with technology and reducing our labor dependency, come out of this thing better than anybody else,” Fish said.

WM executives said they believe wage inflation may have peaked for the moment — due, in part, to heightened wage increases made last year — but they said hiring and retention remain challenging. Company leadership also highlighted how an ease in supply chain challenges could improve the company’s outlook.

“We’re hopeful that in the back half of the year, we start to see a pretty significant ramp-up there in the vehicles that we’ve ordered. That’s a pretty important part of the inflation picture because … maintenance cost is not insignificant as a cost line item. And that obviously is impacted as you’re having to keep older trucks in the fleet,” said Fish.

Read the full story here

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Will ‘worse and worse’ flooding wash Appalachia away?

*A home in Pilgrim’s Knob, Virginia, sits empty after being lifted from its foundation by a recent flood. Credit: Chris Kenning, USA Today.*

By Chris Kenning, Connor Giffin and James Bruggers, Inside Climate New

Devastating floods that killed at least 37 people in Kentucky and recent damage in other parts of Appalachia, including Virginia and West Virginia, are fueling urgent questions about how to mitigate the impact of hazardous flooding that is only expected to increase as climate change fuels more extreme weather.

But in one of America’s most economically depressed regions, there are few easy answers.

The region’s mountainous landscape, high poverty rates, dispersed housing in remote valleys, coal-mining scarred mountains that accelerate floods and under-resourced local governments all make solutions extremely difficult.

Measures such as flood wells, drainage systems or raising homes are expensive for cash-strapped counties. Buyouts or building restrictions are difficult in areas where safer options and new home construction are limited. Many are unable or unwilling to uproot.

And tamping down extreme weather by reducing climate-changing emissions nationwide is a goal that is politically fraught, including in a region with coal in its veins, that promises no quick relief.

“If we had all the money in the world, and we had the political will and cooperation, we could go a long way towards solving these problems,” said William Haneberg, director of the Kentucky Geological Survey and a professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Kentucky.

Read the full story here

Will ‘worse and worse’ flooding wash Appalachia away? Read More »

New Jersey targets Monsanto in latest natural resource damage environmental lawsuit

*File photo: Men in protective clothing work at a Superfund site in Camden.*

By Jon Hurdle, NJ Spotlight

New Jersey filed its latest lawsuit seeking compensation for alleged damages to the environment, this time claiming that Monsanto and two former affiliates produced toxic PCBs that leaked into the state’s air and water over almost 50 years.

The lawsuit says the companies caused “significant, long-term damage” to the state’s waterways and groundwater, as well as to soil, air, and wildlife by allowing and encouraging disposal of the chemicals that they knew to be hazardous at Monsanto’s plant beside the Delaware River in Bridgeport, Gloucester County.

The companies advised their customers to dispose of PCB waste directly into sewers and to vent the chemical vapors into the atmosphere despite knowing that the actions would cause environmental contamination and expose residents to substances that are linked to health complaints, including liver damage, respiratory infections, and some cancers, the suit said.

“PCB contamination has harmed natural resources and threatened the health of humans and wildlife in every corner of New Jersey, from remote rural areas to suburban neighborhoods, to our cities,” said acting Attorney General Matthew Platkin, in a statement last week.

First of its kind

It’s the state’s first suit alleging that PCBs damaged the natural environment.

The Murphy administration has now filed 19 “natural resource damage” lawsuits against industrial polluters, alleging long-term damage to the environment and public health and seeking a court order for the companies to pay for the investigation and cleanup. None of the lawsuits has so far been resolved, according to the attorney general’s office.

In 2019, the state sued Sherwin-Williams claiming it discharged waste products from manufacturing paints, lacquers, and varnishes into a Camden County creek. Contamination at this location, along with lead and arsenic, also led the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to designate it a Federal Superfund site in 2008. It became one of New Jersey’s 114 Superfund sites, the most of any state.

Also in 2019, the state sued Handy & Harman Electronic Materials Corp. for allegedly discharging hazardous materials including TCE (trichloroethylene), a degreasing chemical, into groundwater near its factory in Bergen County in the 1980s.

Tougher than Christie

Overall, the actions signal that the Murphy administration is taking a more aggressive stance against corporate polluters than its predecessor, the Christie administration, which filed no such suits.

Jeff Tittel, former director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, welcomed this latest lawsuit but said the state would have a better chance of winning such legal challenges if the state Department of Environmental Protection had a regulatory framework that addressed corporate responsibility for damage to natural resources.

“The DEP has never developed rules and standards for natural resource damages,” he said. “Not having clear standards in place hinders our ability to prosecute these cases to the extent that we need to.” The absence of such regulations also limits the amount of money that the state can seek in damages and makes settlements more likely, he said.

“The AG is taking the right approach by suing; the DEP has a lot of work to do to move these things along,” Tittel said.

That criticism was echoed by the Chemistry Council of New Jersey, which said the DEP has failed to comply with a 2004 agreement between the attorney general’s office and plaintiffs, including the council, to develop regulations on natural resource damages and to stop filing those cases until such regulations are published.

Read the full story here

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How we can afford to build protections against rising sea levels along the U.S. coast

Nearly one trillion dollars of US real estate is threatened by rising seas, and the risk is already affecting home values

By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Editor

It’s inescapable: Global warming is real. It is triggering unprecedented droughts and raging forest fires in the west, punishing floods in farm states, and rising ocean levels along our east coast.

*Taxi parking lot in Hoboken, NJ hit by Superstorm Sandy*

Global warming cannot be denied, except by political idealogues, conspiracy theory spreaders, and self-serving fossil-fuel corporations. It’s getting worse by the day and the projected costs to deal with it are staggering.

Mike Italiano helped create the U.S. Green Building Council and its LEED building standards that are rewarding forward-looking companies with higher building occupancy and lower operating costs

*Mike Italiano, CEO, Capital Markets Partnership*

We will sit down with Mike next week for a video interview to learn about his team’s funding plan–one, he says, that would not involve tax-payer contributions.

Too good to be true? We recommend that you watch the interview, take notes, and submit your follow-up questions for Mike’s response.

How we can afford to build protections against rising sea levels along the U.S. coast Read More »

It’s 101 in Trenton today but the political temps could rise even higher at this upcoming hearing

By Frank Brill, EnviroPolitics Editor

The Senate and Assembly environmental committees will meet jointly in Toms River next Thursday on bills to prohibit state pension fund investments in the nation’s largest 200 fossil fuel companies.

It’s 101 in Trenton today but the political temps could rise even higher at this upcoming hearing Read More »

Unlikely pair oppose NJ gas pipeline expansion

But utilities say they need additional supply to meet growing customer demand

By Tom Johnson, NJ Spotlight

In a rare alliance, the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities and the state Division of Rate Counsel are jointly fighting the expansion of an interstate natural gas pipeline by arguing consumers should not have to pay for the unneeded gas capacity that would be provided by the project.

In a filing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the two state agencies contend that a study adopted by the BPU earlier this summer found that New Jersey is unlikely to experience shortages in natural gas through the end of this decade.

That conclusion is contested by the state’s four gas utilities, all of which have agreed to purchase additional gas capacity for the 2024 winter heating season. Transcontinental Gas Pipeline Company (Transco) designed this project to increase the capacity of its existing pipeline system by 829,000 dekatherms per day in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland.

Feuding over fossil fuel

The dispute is meaningful because it comes at a time when climate advocates have been pressing the Murphy administration to impose a moratorium on new fossil-fuel projects, a stance so far rejected by officials.

“This is a historic moment for the BPU and Rate Counsel to acknowledge the obvious. We do not need more fracked gas in New Jersey,’’ said Doug O’Malley, director of Environment New Jersey.

NJ natural-gas supply adequate through 2030, a new analysis indicates

“What’s significant is the BPU is taking a step toward looking at the broader issues and whether this project is needed,’’ said Tom Gilbert, an executive director of the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. “It is a huge change in their operating procedures.’’

In the past, Gilbert’s organization and the Rate Counsel had opposed a controversial 120-mile pipeline in New Jersey and Pennsylvania that would have crossed waterways and open spaces on this side of the Delaware River. The New Jersey portion of the so-called PennEast project was eventually dropped because of repeated delays.

Read the full story

If you liked this post you’ll love our daily environmental newsletter, EnviroPolitics. It’s packed with the latest news, commentary, and legislative updates from New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, Delaware…and beyond. Don’t take our word for it, try it free for an entire month. No obligation.

Unlikely pair oppose NJ gas pipeline expansion Read More »