Industry News

Mergers & Acquisitions

GFL advances growth through acquisitions

GFL Environmental, headquartered in Vaughan, Ontario, has acquired Capital Waste Services, a waste services firm based in Columbia, South Carolina.

Capital Waste, a portfolio company of New York-based Kinderhook Industries LLC, provides solid waste hauling services for residential, commercial and industrial waste generators.  

GFL announced the acquisition during its third-quarter earnings call Nov. 2.

During that call, the firm noted that it completed 11 acquisitions in the third quarter and four acquisitions after the quarter’s end. Patrick Dovigi, CEO of GFL Environmental, highlighted two acquisitions in particular that pose “highly attractive growth opportunities” for GFL, including Capital Waste.

He described Capital Waste as a “vertically integrated, secondary market- focused solid waste business” located in the middle of GFL’s already dense footprint in the Southeast.

“We believe Capital Waste’s four landfills, eight transfer stations and over 200 collection vehicles have meaningful runway and self-help opportunities to drive outsized organic growth and margin expansion in the near term,” he said.

During the past two years, Capital Waste also has grown significantly through several acquisitions.

In 2022, the company acquired the assets of Pascon LLC, a Lexington, South Carolina-based solid waste hauler providing dumpsters, roll-off containers and hauling services to residential and industrial customers. The assets include six front-end-load waste collection vehicles, along with the routes associated with those vehicles.

In February, Capital Waste acquired two waste operations in Tennessee—Southern Central Waste Services, based in McMinnville, and Priority Waste Services Inc., based in Soddy Daisy. In March, the company acquired the Sandlands C&D Landfill in Gresham, South Carolina, marking its 10th add-on acquisition.

During the Q3 earnings call, Dovigi also mentioned GFL’s acquisition of  Fielding Environmental, a family-owned environmental services business based in Toronto. The company was established in 1955 and is “in the heart of the largest footprint of [GFL’s] environmental services business,” he said. 

“Fielding has … highly complementary specialized processing capabilities and a Part B permit that will allow for the realization of material internalization and organic cross-selling growth opportunities within our existing environmental services network,” Dovigi said.

These recently completed deals will result in 10 to 15 basis points of higher leverage in Q4 and will have a short-term impact on free cash flow conversion, according to GFL.

Dovigi said, “We are highly confident in our ability to generate accretive returns on invested capital from these investments over the medium term, leading to even better free cash flow conversion in the future.”

Landfills

New Hampshire approves expansion of Turnkey Landfill

WM’s Turnkey Landfill in Rochester, New Hampshire, has received state approval to move forward with a 60-acre expansion, according to a report in Foster’s Daily Democrat.

The expansion project was awaiting approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as of press time. State approval came from the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services Air Resources Division (NHDES), which issued a Title V Operating Permit.

The EPA has 45 days from Oct. 25 to object to the issuance of the permit for the site, which is more than 1,300 acres. If the agency does not raise an objection, NHDES will issue the final permit for the site.

If the EPA approves the expansion, the permit would allow WM to move forward with its plan to accept an additional 1.4 million to 1.55 million tons of waste, some from out of state, at the Turnkey Landfill.

According to the permit application, the Rochester site, which is operated by a private subsidiary of Houston-based WM, would increase its disposal capacity and extend the lifespan of its 218-acre active landfill by adding another 60 acres. Three landfills exist at the site, though two are inactive and capped.

Rochester city councilors say they are looking for ways to make up for the $4 million loss in annual hosting revenue when the Turnkey Landfill permanently closes, which is estimated to be in 2034 if the expansion isn’t approved by the EPA.

Conversion Technology

Ameresco Inc. starts up RNG operations at Kentucky landfill

Ameresco Inc., a cleantech integrator that specializes in energy efficiency and renewable energy, says it has achieved commercial operation at its landfill gas (LFG) to renewable natural gas (RNG) plant at Republic Services’ Benson Valley Landfill, which is in Frankfort, Kentucky.

The Benson Valley facility has a nameplate capacity in excess of 483,552 dekatherms annually and can process 2,000 standard cubic feet per minute of raw LFG.

Ameresco, headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts, broke ground on the project in June 2022 and achieved commercial operation this August. 

As a result of this long-term partnership, Benson Valley Landfill will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 27,440 tons per year, a figure that is roughly equivalent to the carbon sequestered by creating 325,899 acres of forest or by not combusting 31 million gallons of gasoline, Ameresco says.

“At Republic Services, our vision is to partner with customers to create a more sustainable world now and for future generations,” Area President Larson Richardson says. “Our long-standing partnership with Ameresco enables us to capture naturally occurring gas created by decomposing waste in our landfill and convert that gas into a low-carbon fuel source that reduces greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions. The Benson Valley RNG facility is just another example of us living our values; we are sustainability in action.”

In a news release announcing the project’s completion, Ameresco says the facility will ensure clean energy resources are available for the regional economy and will significantly reduce GHG emissions within the environment.

These benefits directly contribute to Republic Services’ long-term sustainability goal to beneficially reuse 50 percent more of its biogas by 2030, the company adds.

This is Ameresco’s 11th biogas project with Republic Services since it began working with the Phoenix-based waste management firm in 2004. The companies are currently working on another 11 projects, which are in various stages of development, permitting or construction.

Ameresco was formed in 2000 and is an early developer of LFG-to-RNG technologies.

Michael Bakas, the company’s executive vice president, tells Waste Today that “within the first 12 months of starting the company, we identified landfill gas as a fuel source that we were interested in developing projects for.”

With interest in renewable energy growing, Bakas says the biogas industry has “really taken off” and serves as a primary driver for cost savings and sustainability within energy markets.

“Resiliency has become a huge trend in the energy space; it’s gaining momentum,” he says. “It’s all about resiliency and being able to withstand … multiday outages. So, historically, to do that you needed a fossil fuel, whether it’s diesel generators or natural-gas-fired co-generation plants, but that isn’t green. RNG is a baseload dispatchable green energy resource that can be used in lieu of natural gas.”

Bakas commends Republic Services for its work in the renewable energy space, noting that the company's various RNG projects are helping to establish it as a leader in the environmental services industry.

Bringing together waste firms and renewable energy integrators creates a “best-in-class team that has deep expertise from the wellhead all the way to the burner tip,” Bakas says.

He continues, “[With] a project like this Benson RNG facility, you’ve got partners that candidly have a lot of great competencies from the very beginning of the food chain to the very end.”

Additionally, Republic Services has partnered with renewable energy company Archaea Energy, which was acquired by BP in 2022, on LFG-to-RNG projects at the company’s landfills.

Such projects include a facility at Republic’s Middle Point Landfill in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and another at its South Shelby Landfill in Memphis, Tennessee.

“Achieving nationwide carbon neutrality necessitates the collective contributions of a diversified portfolio of technologies; there is no singular solution,” Bakas says.

He continues, “Republic Services has made such a commitment, and we at Ameresco are profoundly fortunate to embark on this sustainability journey alongside them. Our collaboration harnesses advanced technologies to convert a byproduct of human activity into dependable and dispatchable renewable energy.”

Organics

Local officials urge EPA to eliminate organics from landfills by 2040

In a letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 56 local officials from 18 states have called for organic waste to be phased out of landfills by 2040.   

As a call to action to combat climate change, the letter proposes cutting methane emissions by diverting organics from landfills, the third-largest methane source in the U.S.  

“Without fast action on methane, local governments will increasingly face the impacts of warming temperatures, sea level rise and extreme weather events,” the letter says.

Citing the severity of Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida in late August, and the heat dome over the Phoenix area this summer, the letter states that “these conditions are costly for local governments and threaten the lives and wellbeing of our residents.” 

The signatories note that the environmental effects of increased greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) combined with structural inequities cause historically underserved communities to suffer disproportionate impacts of climate change. 

The letter proposes expanding grant funding and technical assistance for municipality-led waste management alternatives, including edible food donation, food scrap conversion to animal feed, composting and anaerobic digestion. 

“EPA should prioritize alternatives to landfilling and incineration that maximize benefits for the environment, society and the economy [while] helping to address food insecurity, reduce dependence on land-intensive feed crops or carbon-intensive fuels, improve soil health, sequester carbon and create jobs,” according to the letter. 

The local officials also urge EPA to update its existing landfill standards to better control harmful GHG emissions. The signatories claim EPA has not kept up with available strategies to prevent, detect and mitigate methane leaks from landfills and request a rulemaking on landfill emissions standards that allows for public feedback and evaluation of costs and benefits of emissions-reduction technologies.  

“Through timely federal action on municipal solid waste landfills, the EPA can slash dangerous methane and toxic air pollution, make progress on climate and environmental justice goals and better protect communities across the country,” according to the letter. “Curbing landfill methane must be a part of our national climate strategy, and we urge the EPA to act now.” 

The letter was released Oct. 31, one day before the EPA announced that it was giving $4.6 million in grant funding to five universities, including the University of California and the University of Miami, to conduct research that will quantify and mitigate emissions from municipal solid waste landfills.