The name of the corporation is Waste Management, Inc., the largest waste disposal company in the world, operating in over 1,300 communities in thirty-six states, with subsidiaries in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Latin America and Asia. WMI is, indeed, a giant, ranking 19th in the Fortune 500 List of diversified service companies in the U.S. with 1989 revenues exceeding four and a half billion dollars.
WMI subsidiaries include Chemical Waste Management, the largest hazardous waste disposal company in the U.S., Chem-Nuclear, the largest nuclear waste disposal firm in the U.S., Brand Industries, the largest asbestos removing company in the U.S, and Wheelabrator Technologies, largest manufacturer and operator of garbage incineration firms in the U.S. WMI also owns over seven hundred other subsidiaries, such as regional waste hauling and incineration companies and including, locally, Empire Waste Management and Fort Bragg Disposal.
WMI's executives are among the highest paid in the world. CEO Dean Buntrock, President Phillip Rooney and Senior V.P. Donald F. Flynn are all paid in excess of $13 million a year, all three rankng in the top ten highest paid executives in the U.S. at the present, largely fuelled by the highly lucrative toxic waste handling business and by the take-over of existing landfill and local trash-hauling firms. WMI acquired 337 businesses from 1982 to 1986 and the pace has accelerated since. Needless to say, such developments did not take place in a political vacuum and by 1987 WMI was making substantial campaign contributions to more than 250 senators and representatives from both political parties.
Recipients of WMI campaign largess include George Bush, Dan Quayle, Alan Cranston and Doug Bosco, in addition to a virtual Who's Who of Senate and House members. WMI's "Better Government Fund" was the seventh largest corporate P.A.C. (Political Action Committee) during the 1988 electoral campaign.
O.K., so WMI is a politically well-connected company doing business all over the world, their big shots are paid too much and they probably exercise too much lobbying muscle in Washington, Sacramento, maybe even Ukiah, but so what? They put those nice, white recycling bins outside of Safeway and Harvest Market, and the T.V. ads with the teary-eyed Indian and those happy recyclers in San Jose don't look too bad, so what's the beef with these guys?
The problems with WMI are twofold. One is philosophical, having to do with, among other things, environmental threats to the planet. The other is technical and legal, and also impacts on the environment. We'll start with the former. For many thousands of ordinary people in the United States, WMI's business ethics leave a stench in the nostrils.
For many victims of WMI's callous and highly dangerous mishandling of toxic waste, the company is seen as a potentially lethal enemy, immune to reason, seemingly incapable of rational compromise and calculatingly indifferent to the health and well-being of truly innocent victims of their corporate behavior.
Many individuals who have suffered at the hands of this company have devoted their lives to cleaning up what they feel is an out-of-control criminal enterprise. In addition, organizations such as the National Toxics Coalition, Citizens Clearinghouse for Hazardous Waste and Greenpeace have spent years monitoring and documenting the criminal convictions of WMI and sharing the information with communities confronting similar problems at the hands of the same company. Many parallels between WMI's business methods and organized crime have been made in print.
Many knowledgeable experts consider WMI the most irresponsible, greed-driven organization operating in America today, ruled over by men who seem to be unaffected by the suffering they inflict on whole communities in the name of profit. These same critics will tell you that WMI is probably the single greatest contributor of CO2.
This article was concluded in the January 30 Anderson Valley Advertiser.
Copyright Mendocino Environmental Center 2004
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited