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About GFL Environmental
GFL Environmental Inc. operates as diversified environmental services company in North America.
The company operates in the large and stable North American environmental services industry. Its diversified offerings consist of solid waste management, liquid waste management and soil remediation services, including collection, transportation, transfer, recycling and disposal services for municipal, residential, and commercial and industrial customers.
Through a combination of organic growth and acquisitions, the company has built a leading platform with broad geographic reach and scalable capabilities, operating throughout Canada and in more than half of the U.S. states.
The company’s business is well diversified across business lines, geography and service type, allowing it to maintain strong revenue growth across macroeconomic cycles. The company generates approximately 60% of its revenue from its the U.S. operations and 40% of its revenue from its Canadian operations.
The company intends to continue to leverage its platform to pursue new business opportunities and generate network efficiencies by extending its geographic footprint and increasing regional density across its business lines.
The company has adopted a decentralized operating structure, giving operational oversight to its regional business leaders. The company focuses on creating long term value for its stakeholders by executing on its growth strategy.
Growth Strategy
The key elements of the company’s strategy are to strong, stable organic revenue growth; and executing strategic, accretive acquisitions.
Operations
Solid Waste
The company’s broad network of solid waste facilities, which includes collection operations, transfer stations, landfills, MRFs and organics facilities, underpins its ability to compete in markets with different disposal dynamics and profitably manage the solid waste volumes that it controls. In some markets, the company creates and maintains vertically integrated operations through which it manages its customers’ waste streams from collection to transfer to disposal. By internalizing waste in those markets where the company has vertically integrated operations, it is able to deliver high quality customer service and benefit from a stable and predictable revenue stream while maximizing profitability and cash flow from its operations. In disposal neutral markets, or markets with excess landfill capacity, the company leverages its control of the substantial solid waste volumes from its collection and transfer stations to negotiate competitive disposal and pricing terms with third party disposal facilities.
In 2021, the company formed a new subsidiary, GFL Renewables LLC (GFL Renewables). GFL Renewables focuses on developing RNG and other renewable energy projects, such as wind and solar, at its landfills. RNG projects will increase its capture and reuse of landfill gas and produce RNG for commercial and industrial direct-use applications, including as fuel in its own fleet of CNG powered vehicles. Harnessing landfill gas for conversion to RNG replaces fossil fuels, such as natural gas, and avoids the environmental impacts associated with its extraction.
Collection Services
The company’s collection services are provided to customers under municipal collection contracts, residential subscription agreements and commercial customer service agreements.
Municipal contracts generally provide for curbside collection services for all or a portion of the households within a municipality and/or collection services for all municipal facilities within the municipality or designated portion thereof. Municipal contracts are typically awarded on a competitive bid basis for a term ranging from three to 10 years often with additional one-or two-year renewal terms at the option of the municipality, with subsequent terms being negotiated or rebid. In Canada, municipal contracts typically direct collected waste and recyclables to a municipal disposal facility or a municipally designated facility. In its U.S. operations, municipal contracts typically provide the company with final disposal optionality, giving it control of solid waste collected through these contracts. Under residential subscription agreements, the company collects various waste streams from residents in one or more areas of a municipality under contract with each resident or with the municipality which gives it the exclusive right to provide collection services to those residents.
The fees it charges under its municipal and residential collection contracts are based on a volume, per household, per service or per lift basis. Certain of the company’s municipal collection contracts include annual price adjustment clauses often tied to changes in an underlying base index, such as a CPI and adjustments for fuel costs.
The company’s solid waste commercial service contracts that provide for recurring services typically have three to five year terms with automatic renewals, volume-based pricing and CPI or adjustments based on other waste-related indices, fuel and other adjustments. The fees the company charges under its commercial services contracts are determined by a variety of factors, including collection frequency, type of service, type and volume or weight of waste, and type of equipment and containers furnished.
The revenue generated through the company’s collection services is predictable and recurring given the longer-term nature of its contracts.
Transfer Services
The company has a strategically-located network of owned and managed solid waste transfer stations which allows it to consolidate waste received at these facilities from its own collection operations, as well as from third-party solid waste collectors for transport to landfills or other disposal sites. The company typically controls the ultimate disposal location of the waste volumes received at its transfer stations.
In many jurisdictions in which the company operates, in order to develop, own or operate a transfer station, it is required to go through a stringent governmental review processes to obtain one or more permits. Obtaining these permits is difficult, time consuming and expensive.
The company’s transfer stations generate revenue through tipping fees paid to it by third party haulers and waste generators, including many of its collection operation’s competitors, who use its transfer station facilities due to their proximity to the locations from which waste is collected. The tipping fees it charges are generally based on the weight or volume of the waste received at its transfer stations. The company also operates transfer stations for municipal owners under a variety of compensation arrangements, including fixed fee arrangements or on a tonnage or other basis.
Landfill, Material Recovery and Organic Processing Services
The company’s owned landfills generate tipping fees paid to it by municipalities and third-party haulers and waste generators. The company’s managed landfills in Canada and the United States are under fixed term operating or life-of-site agreements. Under these agreements, the municipality that owns the landfill usually also owns the permit and the company provides operations at the landfill, ranging from all daily landfill operations to supervising municipal workers in the conduct of day-to-day operations at the landfill, for a contracted term. In addition, by the terms of these agreements, the municipal property owner, rather than GFL, is generally responsible for final capping, closure and post-closure obligations.
MRFs are specialized facilities that receive, separate and prepare recyclable materials. The company offers residential, commercial, industrial and municipal customers recovery services for a variety of recyclable materials, including fiber/old corrugated cardboard, mixed papers, glass bottles, as well as certain plastics and ferrous/non-ferrous metal. Revenue from the company’s MRF operations is largely generated from the processing fees charged to third parties based on the volume of materials received at its facilities. The company also generates revenue from the sale of recyclable materials to third parties.
Residential single-stream programs have greatly increased recycling volumes in North America. Single-stream recycling is possible through the use of various artificial intelligence and optical sorting technologies installed at MRFs. The company is continually reviewing its existing recycling technology and assessing and implementing new technology in order to improve its sorting capabilities. The company has invested in state-of-the-art technology at its MRFs, including elliptical fiber separation, optical sorting, fully automated high-speed sorting robots and other mechanical separation processes that allow it to achieve improved recovery of recyclable materials and produce high-quality processed recyclables. This technology is featured at most of the company’s MRFs in both Canada and the United States. The company’s Toronto recycling facility, located on a 27 acre site housing two MRFs, includes 22 optical sorters, eight balers and three fully automated sorting robots. This facility provides municipal residential recycling services to a population of over 4 million individuals, as well as industrial, commercial and institutional recycling services, and processes approximately 365,000 tonnes of recyclables per year. The company’s Winnipeg MRF was awarded the National Waste & Recycling Association 2020 Recycling Facility of the Year and its Toronto recycling facility was awarded the National Waste & Recycling Association 2022 Recycling Facility of the Year.
The company has also invested in dedicated facilities for the recycling of wood-based waste materials such as pallets, crates and lumber cut-offs into a range of products, including wood flour-filler, garden mulch, animal bedding and others. The company’s wood recycling business creates value from wood waste, drives landfill diversion and eliminates the negative environmental impact of processing lumber.
Organics facilities recycle organic waste to produce a high-quality compost product, fertilizers and other soil supplements. The company’s organic facilities help communities reduce their overall GHG footprint by keeping organic waste out of landfills and by generating a compost product from recycled rather than virgin materials.
Environmental Services
The company’s Environmental Services segment consists of its liquid waste management and its soil remediation services businesses.
Liquid Waste
In its liquid waste operations, the company collects, consolidates, manages, transports and processes hazardous and non-hazardous industrial and commercial waste, including contaminated wastewater, for treatment, recycling, recovery, disposal or beneficial use. The company provides on-site industrial cleaning and waste processing services by deploying or co-locating specialized staff and equipment to a customer’s operating facility. The company also resells liquid waste products, including UMO and downstream by-products. Wherever possible, collected liquid waste (including UMO) is recycled and recovered for reuse through provincial stewardship programs in Canada. Within its liquid waste business, the company also provides HAZMAT emergency response services, available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The company’s emergency response services allow it to provide timely technical responses to incidents involving road, rail or air transport, including the containment and proper transportation of hazardous waste to one of its approved facilities.
The company provides liquid waste services to municipal, residential, and commercial and industrial customers. Revenue in the company’s liquid waste operations is predominantly generated from fees charged to customers on a per service, volume and/or hourly basis, as well as the sale of UMO and downstream by-products.
The company’s liquid waste operations include processing, collection and storage facilities, tank farms where it collects, temporarily stores and/or consolidates waste streams for more cost-effective and efficient transportation to end users or to final recycling, treatment or disposal locations, as well as a specialized re-refinery in North Vancouver with complex processing capabilities to produce oil and finished lubricants. The scale of the company’s operations and breadth of its liquid waste services also allow it to cross-sell solid waste services to its liquid waste customers and liquid waste services to its soil remediation customers in those markets where it operates these lines of business.
Soil Remediation
The company’s soil remediation operations are concentrated in Southern Ontario and the Northeastern United States, in addition to a facility in California. In this business line, the company excavates and transports clean and contaminated soils and remediate and dispose of contaminated and remediated soils. Soil remediation facilities remediate contaminated soils for beneficial reuse, including in construction and development projects.
Revenue from the company’s soil remediation operations primarily consists of fees for the remediation of contaminated soils, including excavation and transportation, as well as increased values of remediated soils through beneficial reuse. Fees are based on the volume of soil being remediated and are typically generated pursuant to short-term, project-specific contracts.
Customers
The company has a large and diverse customer base across its operations. The company’s municipal customer base includes, among others, investment grade-rated municipalities, school boards, hospitals and other governmental agencies. The company’s commercial and industrial customers include large commercial property owners or managers, construction companies, entertainment and recreational facilities and small businesses, such as restaurants. In jurisdictions that have adopted EPR regulations, its customers may also include producers and producer responsibility organizations. The company’s customer service representatives seek customer feedback and monitor customer call data in order to continually improve its performance and customer retention.
Information Management and Technology Systems
The company has implemented robust infrastructure and information technology systems and has made significant investments in new technology, as well as the innovation of existing management and operating processes.
Operations
Solid Waste
The company’s broad network of solid waste facilities, which includes collection operations, transfer stations, landfills, MRFs and organics facilities, underpins its ability to compete in markets with different disposal dynamics and profitably manage the solid waste volumes that it controls. In some markets, the company creates and maintains vertically integrated operations through which it manages its customers’ waste streams from collection to transfer to disposal. By internalizing waste in those markets where the company has vertically integrated operations, it is able to deliver high quality customer service and benefit from a stable and predictable revenue stream while maximizing profitability and cash flow from its operations. In disposal neutral markets, or markets with excess landfill capacity, the company leverages its control of the substantial solid waste volumes from its collection and transfer stations to negotiate competitive disposal and pricing terms with third party disposal facilities.
In 2021, the company formed a new subsidiary, GFL Renewables LLC (GFL Renewables). GFL Renewables focuses on developing RNG and other renewable energy projects, such as wind and solar, at its landfills. RNG projects will increase its capture and reuse of landfill gas and produce RNG for commercial and industrial direct-use applications, including as fuel in its own fleet of CNG powered vehicles. Harnessing landfill gas for conversion to RNG replaces fossil fuels, such as natural gas, and avoids the environmental impacts associated with its extraction.
Collection Services
The company’s collection services are provided to customers under municipal collection contracts, residential subscription agreements and commercial customer service agreements.
Municipal contracts generally provide for curbside collection services for all or a portion of the households within a municipality and/or collection services for all municipal facilities within the municipality or designated portion thereof. Municipal contracts are typically awarded on a competitive bid basis for a term ranging from three to 10 years often with additional one-or two-year renewal terms at the option of the municipality, with subsequent terms being negotiated or rebid. In Canada, municipal contracts typically direct collected waste and recyclables to a municipal disposal facility or a municipally designated facility. In its U.S. operations, municipal contracts typically provide the company with final disposal optionality, giving it control of solid waste collected through these contracts. Under residential subscription agreements, the company collects various waste streams from residents in one or more areas of a municipality under contract with each resident or with the municipality which gives it the exclusive right to provide collection services to those residents.
The fees the company charges under its municipal and residential collection contracts are based on a volume, per household, per service or per lift basis. Certain of its municipal collection contracts include annual price adjustment clauses often tied to changes in an underlying base index, such as a CPI and adjustments for fuel costs.
The company’s solid waste commercial service contracts that provide for recurring services typically have three to five year terms with automatic renewals, volume-based pricing and CPI or adjustments based on other waste-related indices, fuel and other adjustments. The fees the company charges under its commercial services contracts are determined by a variety of factors, including collection frequency, type of service, type and volume or weight of waste, and type of equipment and containers furnished.
The revenue generated through the company’s collection services is predictable and recurring given the longer-term nature of its contracts.
Transfer Services
The company has a strategically-located network of owned and managed solid waste transfer stations which allows it to consolidate waste received at these facilities from its own collection operations, as well as from third-party solid waste collectors for transport to landfills or other disposal sites. The company typically controls the ultimate disposal location of the waste volumes received at its transfer stations.
In many jurisdictions in which the company operates, in order to develop, own or operate a transfer station, it is required to go through a stringent governmental review processes to obtain one or more permits.
The company’s transfer stations generate revenue through tipping fees paid to it by third party haulers and waste generators, including many of its collection operation’s competitors, who use its transfer station facilities due to their proximity to the locations from which waste is collected. The tipping fees the company charges are generally based on the weight or volume of the waste received at its transfer stations. The company also operates transfer stations for municipal owners under a variety of compensation arrangements, including fixed fee arrangements or on a tonnage or other basis.
Landfill, Material Recovery and Organic Processing Services
The company’s owned landfills generate tipping fees paid to it by municipalities and third-party haulers and waste generators. The company’s managed landfills in Canada and the United States are under fixed term operating or life-of-site agreements. Under these agreements, the municipality that owns the landfill usually also owns the permit and it provides operations at the landfill, ranging from all daily landfill operations to supervising municipal workers in the conduct of day-to-day operations at the landfill, for a contracted term. In addition, by the terms of these agreements, the municipal property owner, rather than GFL, is generally responsible for final capping, closure and post-closure obligations.
MRFs are specialized facilities that receive, separate and prepare recyclable materials. The company offers residential, commercial, industrial and municipal customers recovery services for a variety of recyclable materials, including fiber/old corrugated cardboard, mixed papers, glass bottles, as well as certain plastics and ferrous/non-ferrous metal. Revenue from the company’s MRF operations is largely generated from the processing fees charged to third parties based on the volume of materials received at its facilities. The company also generates revenue from the sale of recyclable materials to third parties.
Residential single-stream programs have greatly increased recycling volumes in North America. Single-stream recycling is possible through the use of various artificial intelligence and optical sorting technologies installed at MRFs. The company is continually reviewing its existing recycling technology and assessing and implementing new technology in order to improve its sorting capabilities. The company has invested in state-of-the-art technology at its MRFs, including elliptical fiber separation, optical sorting, fully automated high-speed sorting robots and other mechanical separation processes that allow it to achieve improved recovery of recyclable materials and produce high-quality processed recyclables. This technology is featured at most of the company’s MRFs in both Canada and the United States.
The company has also invested in dedicated facilities for the recycling of wood-based waste materials, such as pallets, crates and lumber cut-offs into a range of products, including wood flour-filler, garden mulch, animal bedding and others. The company’s wood recycling business creates value from wood waste, drives landfill diversion and eliminates the negative environmental impact of processing lumber.
The company’s organic facilities help communities reduce their overall GHG footprint by keeping organic waste out of landfills and by generating a compost product from recycled rather than virgin materials.
Environmental Services
The company’s Environmental Services segment consists of its liquid waste management and its soil remediation services businesses.
Liquid Waste
In its liquid waste operations, the company collects, consolidates, manages, transports and processes hazardous and non-hazardous industrial and commercial waste, including contaminated wastewater, for treatment, recycling, recovery, disposal or beneficial use. The company provides on-site industrial cleaning and waste processing services by deploying or co-locating specialized staff and equipment to a customer’s operating facility. The company also resells liquid waste products including UMO and downstream by-products. Wherever possible, collected liquid waste (including UMO) is recycled and recovered for reuse through provincial stewardship programs in Canada. Within its liquid waste business, the company also provides HAZMAT emergency response services, available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The company’s emergency response services allow it to provide timely technical responses to incidents involving road, rail or air transport, including the containment and proper transportation of hazardous waste to one of its approved facilities.
The company provides liquid waste services to municipal, residential, and commercial and industrial customers. Revenue in the company’s liquid waste operations is predominantly generated from fees charged to customers on a per service, volume and/or hourly basis, as well as the sale of UMO and downstream by-products.
The company’s liquid waste operations include processing, collection and storage facilities, tank farms where it collects, temporarily stores and/or consolidates waste streams for more cost-effective and efficient transportation to end users or to final recycling, treatment or disposal locations, as well as a specialized re-refinery in North Vancouver with complex processing capabilities to produce oil and finished lubricants. The scale of the company’s operations and breadth of its liquid waste services also allow it to cross-sell solid waste services to its liquid waste customers and liquid waste services to its soil remediation customers in those markets where it operates these lines of business.
Soil Remediation
The company’s soil remediation operations are currently concentrated in Southern Ontario and the Northeastern United States, in addition to a facility in California. In this business line, the company excavates and transports clean and contaminated soils and remediate and dispose of contaminated and remediated soils. Soil remediation facilities remediate contaminated soils for beneficial reuse, including in construction and development projects.
Revenue from the company’s soil remediation operations primarily consists of fees for the remediation of contaminated soils, including excavation and transportation, as well as increased values of remediated soils through beneficial reuse. Fees are based on the volume of soil being remediated and are typically generated pursuant to short-term, project-specific contracts.
Customers
The company has a large and diverse customer base across its operations. The company’s municipal customer base includes, among others, investment grade-rated municipalities, school boards, hospitals and other governmental agencies. The company’s commercial and industrial customers include large commercial property owners or managers, construction companies, entertainment and recreational facilities and small businesses, such as restaurants. In jurisdictions that have adopted EPR regulations, its customers may also include producers and producer responsibility organizations.
Intellectual Property Rights
The company has registered the GFL Green for Life and Green Today Green for Life trademark names and designs with the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In addition, the company holds a number of registered and unregistered trademarks, including GFL Environmental, GFL and others accumulated as a result of its historical acquisitions.
Seasonality
The company’s operating revenues tend to be higher in the second and third quarters (year ended December 31, 2022), due to the higher volumes of waste generated during the summer months in many of its solid waste markets, and lower in the first quarter, primarily due to winter weather conditions.
Government Regulations
For example, some of the company’s operations are subject to federal legislation, including the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and regulations, particularly the Export and Import of Hazardous Waste and Hazardous Recyclable Material Regulations, the Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act and the Transportation of Dangerous Goods Act and regulations.
In its the U.S. operations, regulations applicable to the company’s business are administered by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (the EPA) and various other federal, state and local environmental, zoning, health and safety agencies.
The Federal Water Pollution Control Act of 1972, known as the Clean Water Act, establishes rules regulating the discharge of pollutants from a variety of sources, including leachate from solid waste disposal sites and wastewaters from transfer stations, that are discharged directly into waters of the United States or discharged indirectly for pre-treatment to publicly owned treatment works. Various states in the United States in which the company operates or might operate in the future have delegated authority to implement the Clean Water Act permitting requirements, and some of these states have adopted requirements that are more stringent than the federal requirements. On October 18, 2021, the EPA issued its PFAS Strategic Roadmap, which lays out the agency’s approach for addressing environmental impacts from PFAS. This roadmap outlines the EPA’s plan to set effluent guidelines for PFAS under the Clean Water Act for certain industrial discharges. Because landfills are identified in the roadmap as a source of PFAS, it is expected that the EPA will eventually set PFAS discharge limits for landfill leachate disposed through a National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit or to a publicly-owned treatment works. Certain of the company’s operations are subject to the requirements of the Clean Air Act, including its large MSW landfills.
History
GFL Environmental Inc. was founded in 2007. The company was incorporated in Ontario in 2007.
