In 1963, Clifford Ronnenberg purchased a small waste management company with big ideas for the future. He quickly realized that collecting and disposing trash wasn’t just a necessary job, but an important community responsibility — and he treated it that way.

Over the years, the company has researched, developed, and introduced some of the most inventive, forward-looking ideas, technologies, and services in the industry — ideas designed to make life easier, cleaner, and safer in the community and to dramatically enhance recycling and materials reclamation.

Among our leading-edge initiatives: pioneering a center for buying back recyclables from the public; extending that concept to retail buyback outlets at grocery stores; introducing an innovative three-can curbside recycling program that revolutionized the ability to easily recycle at home — and then improving on that idea with material recovery technology that automatically separates recyclables from trash; developing and installing a groundbreaking biofilter to minimize odors from our solid waste recycling plant; converting our trash collecting fleet to clean-burning liquefied natural gas; and opening a state-of-the-art materials recovery center that saves 1,000 tons of used construction materials from the landfill each day.