Wall Street’s Next Big Play is Garbage
Efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and to reuse materials are making it more profitable to mine landfills for energy and sift through refuse for the hot commodities of the green economy, such as detergent bottles and cardboard boxes.
WM and Republic are building plants to isolate methane from the fumes emitted by rotting garbage and pipe it into the natural-gas grid to be burned in power plants, furnaces and kitchens. They are also equipping recycling facilities with the latest in automation to better sort and process materials for the consumer-goods companies that are under pressure to keep their packaging out of landfills and the ocean.