The greening of Waste Management

Waste Management is one of the nation's landfill operators. Go to your dumpster. It will likely have a sticker that says Waste Management, or Republic Services. Landfill operators have long got a bad environmental rap. Waste Management may be trying to clean its act up.

POMPANO BEACH, Florida (Fortune) -- Most people who travel to Florida in winter visit the beach or Disney World. I spent a day looking at garbage.

Have you noticed that Waste Management, the nation's largest waste disposal company, has adopted "Think Green" as its slogan? The $14-billion-a-year firm gave me a guided tour of a landfill, a waste-to-energy plant and a recycling facility to learn more about "Think Green" - and so I could see for myself what happens to our garbage when we throw it away.

There's no such place as "away," of course. Although big-city waste is sometimes trucked hundreds of miles to its final resting place in an out-of-the-way locale, all garbage ends up somewhere. Here's a report on my trash tour:

Read the rest here.

We cannot get by without landfills ... but the subtitle for this article should be: Reuse.