The Importance Of Waste Management

In out current day and age, waste management is an industry that is often taken for granted. Society goes on day by day unaware of the collective contribution individuals, households, businesses are making towards filling our landfills. For the past 80 years, landfills have been mankind’s temporary solution to a much more permanent problem. Pictures of land fills have become the poster child for environmental advocacy groups over the course of their history. The waste management industry has sat relatively content on their landfill oriented waste disposal process but have recently seen shifts in their external business environment accompanied by the lack there of in their internal environment. Waste Management’s senior officials and company …show more content…
Appeasing the stakeholders in this context could create a new and improved future for the company. Waste Management must be transparent and communicate clearly its intentions to shift away from use of landfills. In doing so, the company must educate their customers on recycling and reduction of waste. This can be done through a series of add campaigns encouraging people to reduce waste, reuse before throwing away, and recycling when possible. To offset the cost of recycling and generate more revenue for the company, Waste Management must invest further in trash-to-energy technologies. Waste Management is already an industry leader in the technology and further involvement will deepen Waste Management in the power industry and thus diversify its revenue streams. This reduced lack of reliance on landfill revenues works in accordance with contingence planning as it serves as a potential new direction for the company. General Electric over the course of its history has remained profitable by diversifying revenues and staying ahead of the curve with regard to industry involvement. The largest and most important investment must be into research and development. Currently, alternative waste disposal methods are crude and scarce. However, a number of potential new technologies are on the horizon. Research is currently being conducted on …show more content…
Their heavy reliance on landfills makes them immobile in their market, limiting their versatility in the face of external environmental pressures. Also, the company’s culture has impaired senior official’s vision of their external environment. With environmentalist breathing down the company’s neck, if they do not adapt, someone else will and they will fail as a company. That being said, Waste Management is clearly an industry leader and as such, the company has been efficient in doing what it does best, manage waste. By getting ahead of the technological curve with their advanced position in trash-to-energy systems the company has potential to corner new markets. Their size will allow to to pioneer new technologies that could change how we deal with trash entirely. Overall, Waste Management is at a pivotal point in their continued success and could either resist change and perish or can be the change and alter the way the world views waste