Think Green

We take every opportunity to promote awareness and understanding of the subject we know best, the environment. Our objective is to spread the word that everyone plays a role in safeguarding our environment. At recycling plants and landfills across the country, we offer educational tours of the facilities and outreach programs that cover everything from recycling to generating electrical power from trash for thousands of students, civic groups and local residents every year. We're committed to providing constructive learning experiences to children and adults across North America. We do this through the donation of educational materials, offering site tours, and involving local community neighbors in our wildlife habitat enhancement projects.

We also distribute materials that provide academic enrichment for school children. Through our Newspapers in Education / Earth Savers materials and our Mr. Cool Can and Story of Garbage videos, Waste Management has reached more than 126,000 students over the past five years.

Many successful programs are the initiatives of local facilities. In Ohio, for example, our American Landfill reaches 63,000 students with the Science Screen Report for Kids, an award-winning video series focused on recent developments in science, technology, engineering, medicine and recycling. In eight states, our waste-to-energy subsidiary, Wheelabrator Technologies Inc., sponsors annual environmental learning projects for middle school students. Over the past 10 years, more than 2,000 students have participated in this learning activity that spans the entire school year.

Our company’s extensive involvement in wetlands projects and wildlife habitats also provides a unique teaching opportunity. Wherever we can, we team up with local schools, universities and environmental groups to provide hands-on cooperative learning opportunities that revolve around our nature preserves and habitats.

When we’re not providing educational opportunities ourselves, we are supporting education in many other ways. We help provide scholarships for local students, funding for literacy programs and volunteers for mentoring programs. We support programs targeted to student achievement and youth at risk.