Four months into WM’s acquisition of Stericycle, the company has focused on ramping up facilities, completing divestitures and tracking key medical waste trends to market itself as a “comprehensive” option for medical waste collection, transportation and treatment.
WM is in the process of integrating Stericycle’s medical waste and secure information destruction businesses into a segment now known as WM Healthcare Solutions. When WM announced the $7.2 billion deal last year, executives said the time was right to return to the medical waste sector due in part to the expanding population of aging people.
The WM Healthcare Solutions business is expected to grow about 9% in 2025, which WM says will likely be driven by organic revenue growth and initiatives such as fleet and asset optimization.
WM had previously dabbled in the space on and off over the years, but hadn’t become a major presence in the sector until recently, due in part to competition from companies like Stericycle, analysts said. In 2005, the company launched Waste Management Healthcare Solutions to provide regulated medical waste services for hospitals and other large waste generators, with the goal of becoming a major player in the industry. Yet by 2013 they had eased off those plans, noting medical waste represented less than $50 million of revenue. WM later sold most of its remaining medical waste assets.
Today, WM is following specific medical waste trends that will offer opportunities for new and expanded business, said Rafa Carrasco, president of WM Healthcare Solutions via email. “Sites of care for patients are significantly changing, with a growing trend towards receiving care in outpatient settings like ambulatory surgery centers, retail clinics, and even at home,” he said.
Carrasco says the future demand for at-home care is a particularly notable trend, as it is expected to generate more waste, including waste from self-injectable medications meant to treat chronic illnesses. That in turn will lead to “more demand for proper medical and pharmaceutical waste disposal options.”
WM entered a highly competitive market when it broke back into the medical waste space, Carrasco said. One type of competitor is what Carrasco calls “large-quantity waste generators,” including some hospitals, which currently have their own onsite treatment processes such as autoclaves. Others in the medical waste space have made a name for themselves by specializing in either collection or transportation services.
Yet WM sees itself as being in an ideal position to offer treatment options alongside collection and transportation, which will help medical facilities simplify and streamline the waste management process, Carrasco said. WM Healthcare Services is positioned to do this because Stericycle already had an “extensive treatment and transportation infrastructure” as well as route density and overall knowledge of market dynamics, he said.
WM Healthcare Services is currently working to integrate numerous aspects of Stericycle’s operations, namely the new 110,000-square-foot medical waste incinerator project Stericycle completed in October in McCarran, Nevada. The $110 million, designed to accept material from hospitals and healthcare systems in the Western U.S., has gone through testing and is now ramping up operations, Carrasco said. Stericycle has 18 medical waste incinerator facilities around the world, according to WM’s most recent securities filings.
The company expects to process 70% of volumes from Stericycle’s Western customers by the end of March, and should be able to process all the remaining volumes from that region by the end of May, he said. The facility is expected to be fully operational by the end of December.
In filings, WM underscored the importance of integrating Stericycle’s assets and operations, which will take “a significant degree of difficulty and management attention” due to the size of the deal.
Over the next three years, WM expects synergies from the deal to be about $250 million, with about $100 million of that in 2025. During a January earnings call, CEO Jim Fish also noted that WM would identify medical facilities that could benefit from cross-selling opportunities, starting as early as 2026.
WM is also in the process of identifying what to do with other elements of Stericycle’s business and assets. Stericycle had 69 autoclaves and facilities described as “alternative medical waste treatment facilities, as well as 167 transfer stations as of December 31. WM listed 35 of Stericycle’s locations as "held for sale,” according to filings.
One recent deal, completed on January 2, was the divestiture of all Stericycle businesses in Spain and Portugal to Urbaser, an international environmental solutions company. Stericycle continues to operate in other markets in Western Europe, Carrasco said.
WM is still operating Stericycle’s services under the Stericycle name, but that will change in coming years. WM will eventually rebrand those services under the WM Healthcare Solutions umbrella, which “will take some time to complete,” he said.
