The solid waste and recycling industry saw plentiful acquisition activity in 2023, with overall spending among the sector’s main publicly traded companies reaching approximately $4.2 billion.

This figure includes spending reported by WM, Republic Services, Waste Connections, GFL Environmental and Casella Waste Systems in the U.S. and Canada. Some of the year’s more notable transactions included multiple companies purchasing divested assets from GFL.

Those companies spent an estimated $6.3 billion on deals in 2022 — that total was bolstered greatly by Republic Services’ $2.2 billion purchase of US Ecology — and around $4.2 billion in 2021. These totals do not include any spending by private equity firms or infrastructure funds, which now play an increasingly large role in M&A.

Catch up on the highlights for the five public companies, including previously unreported transactions, as well as what executives said about potential 2024 activity during recent quarterly earnings calls.

*Spending totals are net of cash acquired, with some variation in methodology among companies.

**GFL figures converted from Canadian to U.S. dollars for comparison purposes, based on March 5 exchange rate.

Recaps and outlooks

WM

WM continued its more measured approach to M&A in 2023 and acquired 12 waste and recycling businesses. This included GFL’s assets in Nashville, Tennessee, as well as Minnesota composter Specialized Environmental Technologies — one of the year’s only standalone organics deals by a major company.

The company plans to invest a similar level of $100 million to $200 million in deals this year. CEO Jim Fish said the potential pipeline of tuck-in deals is “robust” and there are “some indications that 2024 could have heightened activity in this regard.” Yet WM is also prioritizing investment in renewable natural gas facilities at existing landfills and recycling infrastructure.

“So there's a number of different reasons why there's a growing list of willing sellers. We're going to take advantage of that,” he said. “But at the same time, we've invested heavily in these organic growth projects, and we want to make sure that we have similar returns before we go invest heavily in tuck-ins.”

Republic Services

Republic led the field in terms of spending. Highlights included Toronto-based Wasteco in March, GFL’s Colorado and New Mexico assets in June, California-based environmental services company ACTenviro in November and Texas-based Central Texas Refuse in December. The company also completed tuck-ins across multiple states.

CFO Brian DelGhiaccio said the company’s Q4 deals were worth about $140 million in annualized revenue from solid waste and recycling, and $200 million from environmental solutions.

The latter purchase of ACTenviro is the first notable expansion of Republic’s environmental solutions portfolio since its bought US Ecology and ACV Enviro. Revenue for that division surpassed $1.7 billion last year. The newly added ACTenviro has facilities throughout the western U.S., including one hazardous waste treatment, storage and disposal facility; as well as numerous transfer stations.

Republic expects to spend at least $500 million on acquisitions this year.

“Our pipeline supports continued acquisition activity in both recycling and waste and environmental solutions,” said CEO Jon Vander Ark, adding that “we never know exactly what we're going to close, and we're going to stay disciplined.”

Waste Connections

Waste Connections spent less in 2023, relative to prior years, and ultimately completed 13 deals. According to CEO Ron Mittelstaedt, this included “activity across our footprint of franchises and competitive markets, including integrated markets, new market entries and a number of tuck-ins to existing operations.”

The company’s most notable purchase was Arrowhead Environmental Partners, which included a large rail-served landfill in Alabama and multiple transfer station assets. Mittelstaedt said the company is on track to double throughput at the site by the end of this year and now has the opportunity to expand into new markets because of the rail disposal network.

Examples of smaller purchases over the past year also include assets from South Lake Refuse & Recycling Services in California, Pratt Trucking in Massachusetts and Blue Diamond Disposal in New Jersey; as well as rights to operate a transfer station in Freeport, Illinois.

This year has been off to a busy start, including the nearly $1.1 billion (Canadian) purchase of 30 energy waste treatment and disposal facilities from Secure Energy Services in Canada, which closed in February. More recently, the company also purchased assets from the Waste-Away Group in Indiana.

Speaking on Feb. 14, Mittelstaedt predicted an “outsized year” of spending and previewed an estimated $150 million to $200 million of acquired revenue closing on top of Secure. “Stay tuned for the next few quarters,” he said.

GFL Environmental

The company completed 39 deals last year, including solid and liquid waste transactions across the U.S. and Canada. The majority were smaller tuck-ins, as it focused instead on reducing debt levels with the large divestiture package.

Looking into this year, GFL anticipates spending $600 million to $650 million (Canadian), about half of which is dedicated to an unspecified Southeast transaction that is set to close in Q2.

After that, CEO Patrick Dovigi said “the lion's share of what we're going to do is just small tuck-in M&A,” focused on collection in markets where the company has “underutilized post-collection assets and transfer stations, recycling facilities and landfills where we can just drive incremental volumes for those facilities.” 

Dovigi also feels the company has a good position to compete on deals given that larger competitors may face a longer federal antitrust review period for certain transactions.

“I think when you have a limited number of dollars you're going to deploy in any given year, particularly like this year, it gives us the luxury of being very selective about what we want to do and where we want to do it and how we want to do it,” he said. 

Casella Waste Systems

Casella closed seven deals last year, including the sizable purchases of GFL’s Mid-Atlantic assets in Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania; plus New York-based Twin Bridges Waste & Recycling.

It also completed other notable transactions such as Taylor Garbage — a hauler in New York that also had a single-stream MRF via related company Southern Tier Recyclers — and Pinard Waste Systems — which described itself as the largest independently owned hauler in New Hampshire.

Looking ahead, President Ned Coletta said that “with the expansion of our operating footprint into the Mid-Atlantic in 2023, we have built our acquisition pipeline to over $800 million and we are positioned well to have another strong acquisition year in 2024.”