Casella releases 2022 sustainability report

Casella Waste Systems Inc., Rutland, Vermont, has published its 2022 Sustainability Report, outlining the company’s progress toward its sustainability vision, while emphasizing five key sustainability metrics to the forefront of its strategic goals.

“With this year’s report, we introduce a distilled focus on five primary goals,” Casella Chairman and CEO John W. Casella says. “While we intend to continue internally measuring our performance against many key sustainability indicators, we believe that elevating our five primary metrics will allow us to maintain a high level of focus around our most important and impactful 2030 goals.”

The five key elements of the company’s sustainability strategy include metrics focused on the people who work for the company, the materials the company manages, the operations that manage those materials, the emissions those operations produce and the communities in which the company operates.

For each element, Casella has established a primary metric and a 2030 goal, as well as additional factors that will help the company advance its sustainability vision. Those primary goals include:

• reducing the company’s Total Recordable Incident Rate, a measure of recordable workplace safety incidents compared to hours worked, to 4;
• reducing, reusing or recycling 2 million tons of solid waste materials;
• reducing the company’s gigajoules of fuel consumed per ton of waste collected by 20 percent below a 2019 benchmark to .396 gigajoules per ton of waste;
• reducing the company’s carbon footprint to 40 percent below the level attained in 2010; and
• increasing charitable giving to communities Casella serves to $2 million, as well as enhancing education and volunteerism in those municipalities.

“This report showcases the progress we have made since we introduced our sustainability goals in 2020, while also recognizing the changing environment in which we operate,” Casella says. “It is increasingly important to all our key stakeholders that we remain both economically and environmentally sustainable. Our industry is evolving, and our company is proud to be one of the leaders of this evolution.”

Casella’s history as a leader in sustainability is marked by several milestones in materials management featured in the report, and it has focused on climate leadership for nearly two decades.

As the only waste and recycling company among the founding members of the EPA Climate Leaders program, Casella reduced its carbon footprint by 45 percent from 2005 to 2010. The company’s climate achievements were recognized in 2012 by the EPA, the Association of Climate Change Officers, the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and the Climate Registry with a Climate Leadership Award for Excellence in GHG management. Casella’s first sustainability report was issued in 2009. More recently, it was honored by World Finance magazine for its sustainability efforts.

A pioneer in sustainable waste and recycling innovation, Casella established the first recycling facility in Vermont in 1977. The 2022 Sustainability Report is the company’s sixth biennial report on its sustainability activities.