Enjoy the journey

For this month’s cover story, I was able to speak with Tara Hemmer, the chief sustainability officer for Houston-based WM, as well as WM Chief Operating Officer John Morris about the waste management company’s approach to growing sustainability-focused services while reducing its own carbon emissions, including a goal to increase recovery of materials by 60 percent, to 25 million tons, by 2030.

Throughout the interview, I enjoyed hearing Hemmer’s take on how the company’s sustainability efforts mirror those of its customers because everyone, from the corporate level down to the personal, is “on their own sustainability journey.”

You can read more about how Hemmer uses education to empower WM’s employees to have conversations with customers about their individual sustainability journeys in the article "Circular strides."

You’ll find other stories of companies on their own sustainability journeys throughout this issue.

For instance, while speaking with Patti Hamilton, vice president of brand and culture for Boca Raton, Florida-based Coastal Waste & Recycling about the company’s performance-based truck wrapping initiative, we got onto the topic of electric vehicles (EVs). In February, Coastal Waste became the first privately owned company in Florida to invest in an electric truck.

Coastal has deployed a Mack LR Electric Class 8 refuse vehicle on routes in Pompano Beach and also is piloting a Volvo CE EC230 Electric 23-ton excavator in one of its material recovery facilities. These moves are just the first steps into investing in EV technology, and, like everyone else, Hamilton explains, Coastal is imagining what an EV-centered future could look like.

“Making that investment made sense to us because we want to be an innovator in the industry,” Hamilton says.

You can read more about Coastal’s fleet management approach in the article "Under wraps."

The airline industry is on a sustainability journey of its own as airlines take steps toward switching from regular jet fuel to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). The airline industry uses 17 billion to 20 billion gallons of fuel annually, Tad Hepner of the Ellisville, Missouri-based Renewable Fuels Association says. In 2021, the federal government issued a SAF Grand Challenge, calling for companies to supply 3 billion gallons of SAF by 2030, aiming to reduce aviation emissions by 20 percent, and to produce 35 billion gallons to supply 100 percent of expected domestic commercial jet fuel use by 2050.

Read more about how companies are racing to produce enough SAF to meet growing demand from airlines in the article "Off to a flying start."