Transforming Your Community’s Waste to Wealth: Infographics

  • Mar 17, 2025
  • Jordan Ashby
    •
  • Charts & Graphs
  • Composting for Community
  • Big Waste
  • Zero Waste
  • Climate and Environmental Justice
  • Democratic Governance
    •

    Once trash is rolled to the curb, where does it go?

    While for most it’s out of sight, out of mind, those same food scraps, plastic packaging, and other discards are fueling a multi-billion dollar industry. 

    These billions are not going back into local economies, and particularly are not being invested into the communities harmed by landfills and incinerators. Rather, these dollars are going straight into the pockets of a few Big Waste corporations. 

    There are, however, local solutions such as waste prevention, reuse, and composting that present an alternative to the status quo and put assets back into the hands of communities. 

    Our new infographics explain Big Waste’s profitable and polluting playbook and how local composting and wasted food reduction offers a circular alternative that turns waste into local wealth.

    Download the Graphics

    Big Waste’s Profitable Playbook

    The majority of waste management infrastructure in the U.S. is increasingly owned by only four companies: Waste Management (WM), Republic Services (Republic), Waste Connections, and GFL Environmental. These four corporations control 60 percent of municipal solid waste landfill volume in the U.S. and are the primary beneficiaries of the country’s growing $91 billion waste industry. In 2022, Waste Management and Republic alone accounted for 36% of the market. 

    It wasn’t always like this. In the mid-20th century, waste was handled by thousands of local haulers across the country, many with just 10 to 20 trucks, that competed for contracts. Landfills were primarily owned by municipalities. From the 1960s onward, however, rapid consolidation and privatization of landfills led to the push out of most of these independent businesses. 

    Today, horizontal and vertical integration continues. Big Waste collectively spent $6.27 billion on mergers and acquisitions in 2022, and another estimated $4.2 billion in 2023.

    As ILSR Associate Director for Research Sue Holmberg explains in her report, Power Play: How Monopolies Leverage Systemic Racism to Dominate Markets, and What We Can Do to Democratize Economic Power:

    Consolidation in the waste industry means that monopolies are able to dominate every profitable chokepoint of the waste processing chain — a strategy known as “vertical integration.” Waste companies have muscled each other out, leaving a handful of companies to dominate entire collection routes, the processing and transfer stations, and the landfills and incinerators, thereby controlling the fees and prices charged at each stage — to local governments, to competitors using their facilities, or directly to customers.

    Read more about how Big Waste collected power in ILSR’s 2024 report PowerPlay and our 2020 report, Fighting Monopoly Power.

    Reducing Wasted Food to Grow Community Wealth

    Today, wasted food makes up 24% of the U.S. municipal waste stream. From 1960 to 2018, the amount of waste generated by Americans tripled. About 60 percent of waste in 2018 ended up in landfills and incinerators. Landfilling food scraps produces 20 times the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions in the form of methane when compared to composting; the warming impact of these methane emissions is 86 times more powerful than carbon dioxide emissions over a 20-year period. Big Waste – for whom every pound tossed translates into profit – has largely encouraged this culture of waste with little regard to the environmental and community harms. 

    We cannot transition to a circular, zero waste economy using the same playbook that benefits corporations over communities, local economies, and the environment. 

    Big Waste increases monopoly power by expanding into alternative waste streams. 

    Recycling began as a local, community-level effort to divert waste from landfills and incinerators. It also was an escape valve from Big Waste’s control of material and dollars. From the 1960s to early 2000s, the rise of recycling drastically shrank the amount of waste going to landfills and, in turn, the pockets of landfill-owning companies. 

    In response, WM and Republic moved into the recycling business, buying up material recovery facilities and successfully lobbying cities to shift from separated recyclables, in which individuals separated glass, paper, and cans prior to collection, to single-stream recycling, in which all recyclables are deposited into a single container. Whereas the separated recycling industry was largely made up of small-scale haulers and remanufacturers, single-stream recycling required the use of material recovery facilities that primarily Big Waste owned. In turn, Big Waste’s successful lobbying of cities to shift to single-stream meant those same Big Waste companies were heavily favored for recycling contracts. The result: vertical integration of the recycling sector, increased contamination, and decreased community control of waste.

    Inherent in the control of recycling in the hands of the same companies that own landfills is a conflict of interest: Big Waste has little incentive to provide high-quality recycling when they will be paid for the material too contaminated to be recycled and, in turn, tipped into their own landfills.

    Now, Big Waste is raising concerns that they are using the same playbook for organics recycling, with the outcome being decreased quality of compost and elimination of independent composting businesses.

    In 2011, WM invested in the Wilmington Organics Recycling Center, which at the time was independently owned and operated by The Peninsula Compost Group (TPCG). Within a year of WM’s investment, TPCG was removed from operations and eliminated as a voting member, giving WM majority ownership. While WM claimed its internal network of resources would increase capacity for the facility, within two years of WM gaining control, the facility received numerous odor complaints and was shut down, disrupting cities’ ability to compost from D.C. to New York City. 

    Investment in related industries not only expands their control over the industry but also allows for greenwashing of their high-pollution landfills, diverting investment from solutions that will actually benefit communities and the environment. 

    Taking back community control.

    Local governments have the power to reclaim their discarded materials through investing in policies and contracts that prioritize local resource management through composting, recycling, and wasted food prevention and rescue. By diverting material locally, communities can reroute profits from the biggest corporations and retain benefits in and for their local area.

    Investing in a local, circular economy – through wasted food prevention, local composting, and local food production – creates a community playbook that keeps dollars and resources local, rather than lining the pockets of Big Waste. 

    Local solutions can cut food loss, enhance soils, support local food production, and protect the climate while addressing community prosperity and equity issues.

    Graphic Figures and Citations

    Acknowledgements

    This research was led by Jordan Ashby and Megan Matthews and builds upon decades of work by Neil Seldman. Graphic design is by Meghan Lambert.

    Thank you to Susan Holmberg, Sophia Jones, Clarissa Libertelli, Brenda Platt, and Julia Spector for their contributions.

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