Winter weather and tariffs were top of mind for five of the largest publicly traded garbage and recycling companies in North America in the first quarter of the year. | Republic Services
Bad weather in parts of the country weighed on leading recycling companies’ first-quarter earnings, their leaders said, but overall they saw revenue increases.
North America’s five largest publicly traded garbage and recycling companies – WM, Republic Services, Casella Waste Systems, GFL Environmental and Waste Connections – all recently disclosed their first-quarter 2025 financial results and reported bumps in revenues compared to the first quarter of 2024 – though they tempered expectations regarding macroeconomic political factors.
During an investor call, Jim Fish, WM president and CEO, said that in January and February, it was unclear whether lower activity was due to inclement weather or an economic downturn, “and I think the answer to that question came in our volumes for March and April, which turned back up nicely.”
The CEOs of the other companies each echoed that dip and recovery in their own investor calls.
The following are details on recycling-related financial results for the top five publicly traded garbage and recycling companies in the first quarter of 2025.
WM
WM reported a Q1 net recycling revenue of $384 million, up 4.3% year over year. Its average commodity price was $88, up from $84 in the same time period in the prior year.
The recycling segment’s first-quarter operating earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, or EBITDA, was up $9 million year over year.
A press release noted that Stericycle, a medical waste and secure information destruction business that WM acquired in 2024, performed well in its first full quarter as part of WM.
In a statement, Fish said the first quarter results “reflect the strong track record of the WM team as we started the year delivering on each of our strategic priorities,” adding that the “solid first quarter results, as well as the strength and resiliency of our business model, give us confidence we are on pace to achieve our 2025 outlook.”
In its quarterly SEC 10-Q report, WM noted that it was seeing higher volumes in its landfill, recycling and WM Renewable Energy businesses, but those were partially offset by lower industrial and residential collection volumes.
Recycling processing and sales revenues attributable to yield decreased $7 million in the first quarter of 2025 compared with the prior year period, the report noted, driven by 10% lower average market prices in its brokerage business that were partially offset by the higher average commodity prices.
“While there may be short-term fluctuations in our commodity-driven businesses as prices change, we continue to take proactive steps to adjust our business models to protect against the downside risk of changes in commodity prices,” the filing noted.
In an April 29 investor call, CFO Devina Rankin noted that the ongoing tariffs could have a positive impact on some of the company’s non-fiber materials, such as aluminum and steel, “as more of that is domestic.”
By the numbers
The following is a look at key first-quarter 2025 recycling numbers from the five largest publicly traded haulers in North America:
WM
Q1 recycling revenue: $384 million.
Q1 revenue change YoY: Up 4.3%.
Average Q1 commodity price: $88.
Commodity price change Yoy: Up 4.7%.
Q1 recycling EBITDA YoY: Up by $9 million.
Republic Services
Q1 recycling revenue: $108 million.
Q1 revenue change YoY: Up 13.1%.
Average Q1 commodity price (excluding glass and organics): $155 per ton.
Commodity price YoY: Up 1.3%.
Casella Waste Systems
Q1 Resource Solutions (which includes recycling) revenue: $82.3 million.
Q1 revenue change YoY: Up 9.6%.
Q1 Resource Solutions operating income: $5.0 million.
Operating income YoY: Up by $0.6 million.
GFL Environmental (converted to U.S. from Canadian dollars on May 5, 2025)
Q1 recycling revenue: $66.3 million.
Q1 revenue change YoY: Up 31.5%.
Waste Connections
Q1 recycling revenue: $61 million.
Q1 revenue change YoY: Up 24.5%.
Average Q1 OCC price: Not reported.
OCC price YoY: Down 20%.
“On the OCC and fiber side, the thing that we’re really tracking more closely is what could happen with retaliatory tariffs because we do ship materials to other markets in Southeast Asia and India,” she said. But the brokerage team “does a fantastic job really making sure that we have a wide variety of markets that we can tap into.”
WM made more capital expenditures in Q1 2025, spending $831 million compared to $668 million in Q1 2024. The recycling segment in particular saw $38 million in capital expenditures, down from the $87 million WM spent on that segment in the first quarter of 2024.
The SEC filing stated that the company’s automated recycling facilities delivered nearly double the operating EBITDA margin compared to non-automated facilities. WM added two new facilities in California and Texas, with seven more “next-gen” recycling plants scheduled to come online in 2025.
Rankin added that the company is not feeling too many effects of the tariffs on the equipment side, because “we’ve been deliberate in procuring the equipment needed for these projects ahead of time.”
Recycling made up about 6.4% of WM’s total revenue, slightly lower year over year. Overall, the company reported revenues of $6.0 billion in the first quarter of 2025, up 16.7% from the same time last year.
Republic Services
Republic Services reported that its recycling processing and commodity sales revenue was $108 million in the first quarter, up 13.1% from the year prior. The average commodity price for the first quarter was also up by $2 year over year, coming in at $155 per ton.
“Our business continues to perform well even with increased volatility in the broader economy,” Jon Vander Ark, CEO and president, said in a press release.
In its quarterly report, the company noted that recycling processing and commodity sales increased revenue by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year, “primarily due to increased volumes at the Las Vegas Polymer Center and reopening a recycling center on the West Coast.”
Republic reports its net revenue for waste and recycling combined, and in the first quarter of 2025 it was about $3.6 billion, up from $3.4 billion a year ago.
In terms of capital expenditures in waste and recycling specifically, Republic spent $241 million in Q1 2025, down from $307 million in the same period last year.
In an April 24 investor call, Vander Ark said commercial production volumes at Republic’s Indianapolis Polymer Center, which opened in March, are expected to ramp up in June.
The Indianapolis Polymer Center is co-located with a Blue Polymers production facility, which will be completed in the coming months, he added. Construction on the Blue Polymers production facility in Buckeye, Arizona, that will complement the Las Vegas Polymer Center should be done early next year.
“I think we could sell out both Las Vegas and Indianapolis multiple times over, that’s the strength of the customer demand,” he added. “Obviously, we are pricing appropriately for that, and we’ll see where pricing goes as we move forward. Most of our contracts are of shorter duration on that front because we’re understanding price discovery and where that market moves.”
Total revenue in the first quarter 2025 was $4 billion, up 3.8% from the same quarter last year. Recycling made up about 2.7% of the overall company revenue.
Vander Ark added that on tariffs, “it’s too early to tell.”
“There are some minor things we’re doing, moving things around the supply chain,” he said, but the impacts will be clearer over the next three months.
Casella
Casella’s Resource Solutions segment, which includes recycling and other businesses, reported $82.3 million in revenue during the first quarter, up 9.6% from the year before.
The Resource Solutions segment includes the company’s recycling business, its organics processing and disposal business, and services for large industrial, institutional or multi-site retail customers.
That increase was driven by new business growth of $3.4 million in National Accounts, higher tipping fees that help to offset recycled commodity price movements, and higher recycling and processing volumes.
The company also discloses operating income in the Resource Solutions business. For the first quarter, the Resource Solutions segment’s operating income was $5.0 million. During the first quarter of 2024, the operating income in that segment was $4.4 million.
In an May 2 investor’s call, CEO John Casella noted that “while tariff and macro uncertainties have been recent topics of investor concerns, the nature of our solid waste business reduces the impact of economic swings, and our domestic focus limits exposure to tariffs.”
In a press release, Casella added that year-to-date, the company has acquired four businesses with approximately $50 million in annualized revenue, and “we continue to work a robust deal pipeline, including both geographic overlays and strategic adjacencies, that we hope will drive further value creation in the future.”
It has also spent about $55.5 million on capital expenditures, up from $30.3 million in the first quarter of 2024.
Overall, the company brought in $417 million in revenue, up 22.3% year over year. The Resource Solutions segment made up about 19.7% of overall revenues in the first quarter of 2025.
GFL Environmental
Canadian company GFL Environmental’s recycling segment brought in 122 million Canadian dollars (about $88.3 million; all subsequent values in USD unless otherwise noted) in revenue in Q1 2025.
Its quarterly report noted that revenue was up about 31.5% year over year.
In a May 1 investor call, CEO and founder Patrick Dovigi said that “based on our experience, we have a high degree of confidence in our ability to successfully operate in an environment with elevated levels of macro uncertainty.”
“In the event tariffs have an inflationary impact on our capex or cost structure, we would expect to pass these through to mitigate our costs against the bottom line,” he said.
Overall, the company reported revenue of $1.2 billion in the first quarter of 2025, a decrease of 7.7% year over year. The loss is due to the changing conversion rate – in Canadian dollars, the company posted a revenue increase. Materials recovery makes up about 7.8% of GFL’s overall revenue.
Dovigi touched on extended producer responsibility programs both in Canada, where program rollout is driving increased volume. In the U.S., “you want to be selective about where you go and investments you make” due to nuances between state laws, he said.
“But listen, the Canadian model, in our view, works extremely well,” he said. “I think consolidating volumes, reducing facilities, building best-in-class facilities that drive the most amount of volume for those facilities will yield optimal outcomes for industry, but it also yields optimal outcomes for the producers over the long term.”
In a press release, Dovigi added that the company used the proceeds from the sale of its Environmental Services business to decrease its debt during the quarter, which “not only accelerates our path to an investment grade credit rating but also allows us to re-ignite our solid waste M&A engine.”
“We redeployed the $6 billion (Canadian) of cash proceeds we received from the sale to repay over $3.5 billion of debt and repurchased over $2.5 billion of our outstanding shares, mostly from our sponsor group, consistent with previous indications,” he said.
Waste Connections
For Ontario, Canada-based Waste Connections, recycling revenue in Q1 2025 was $61 million, up 24.5% from the same period of 2024.
However, the company’s quarterly report noted that year-over-year revenues from sales of recyclable commodities decreased by $2.1 million, due to 20% lower prices for OCC, though those were partially offset by an increase in volumes and an increase in the prices of certain grades of metal and plastic.
Unlike in past quarters, the company did not report its average OCC price for this quarter.
Mittelstaedt said in an April 24 investor call that, “to the inevitable question about how our business may have been affected by concerns about tariffs or other geopolitical elements impacting expectations or the economy more broadly, as is evidenced by our Q1 results, we didn’t see any noteworthy impacts.”
The company is looking to move some of its fleet parts inventory to domestic American manufacturers “to avoid any potential” for tariffs, he said.
He added in a statement that the “industry-leading results are indicative of the durability of our unique approach to market selection, our decentralized operating model and the resulting projectability from our commitment to excellence.”
The company acquired three non-hazardous solid waste collection and recycling businesses during the quarter, spending about $12 million. It reported $129 million in net revenues from acquisitions in the first quarter of the year.
Overall, Waste Connections reported a Q1 2025 revenue of $2.2 billion, up 10% year over year. Recycling made up about 2.8% of its total revenue.