Now we're back to our program. Back to solid waste, Waste Management. We have coming on the stage with us Devina Rankin, who is the Chief Financial Officer, and John Morris, who's the Chief Operating Officer. We're here to talk about all things waste again.
We have had. What have we had? We've had three garbage companies up so far, and the focus that I'm trying to pull out of our investor summit this year is that I don't really care about the last quarter. What I care about is sort of the trends, the, you know, the things that can be influenced.
At the top of my list has always been the most important thing to focus on and organic growth is the thing you can control, and that's price, and the volume piece takes care of itself if you've managed the asset utilization, the market selection correctly. Then there's selective, unique things you can do around volume. Can we start this conversation talking about, not because you're big. Relax, Chuck, we're not having that conversation. You are big. You're everywhere. What's the opportunity to really maintain a pricing discipline that drives operating leverage through the business model, given the changing dynamics of the market, the inflationary environment we live, the labor challenges you've lived with? Talk about the discipline in your model that helps assure that you can do that.
What I think is important is that we look at price in a multifaceted way. Maximizing customer lifetime value is the thing we talk about within the organization.
Don't lose them.
Most important. Exactly. Customer retention is key, which of course that starts with service, but differentiated service is something that also extends to price. Beyond customer lifetime value, we focus on return on invested capital and thinking about the differentiated asset network that WM has in the marketplace and ensuring that we are getting the appropriate returns for having in 16 of the 20 largest MSAs in North America, having the best or tied for the best place landfill assets in those markets. Ensuring that we think about not just what those markets look like today, but how those markets are going to evolve over the long term. In terms of customer lifetime value and retention, for us, that has been service-driven.
Thinking about the benefits that come with WM customers recognizing not just the service that we provide day in and day out, picking up the waste from the street, but thinking about the investments we're making throughout the value chain. That mean that this is not just a service that they can count on today in terms of disposing of waste, but actually maximizing the value that can be created from it. Environmental sustainability has also been imperative to how we think about the pricing elements of the business. It's also important that we think about managing our cost structure. When you maximize the efficiency of the business and really drive cost optimization through automation and optimization, which are part of our DNA.
Mm-hmm.
The way we've always done business, we know that we can differentiate there too. By having a really solid focus on taking care of our business in terms of maximizing what we do there, we can extend that to the price side of the equation as well. I think that when you look at the impact of inflation, it's really interesting. John and I have both been in the business a long time and sat around the table preparing for earnings calls and investor meetings for a really long time. I remember all the conversations where we would talk about 4% core price and 2% yield, and that being kind of the indicator of where we were providing the right leverage from that cost structure into margin expansion.
We're in a completely different environment today, obviously, but we know that what we have shown in this business is a resilience that we always knew was there. It also lends itself to thinking about that long-term formula and what it will look like for the long term is dependent upon how you take a core price dollar in the WM model and translate that into yield.
Well, narrow the spread-.
Exactly.
When you're done. What, what's on your dashboard as the senior operator managing this diverse team that gives you comfort that you are improving that, narrowing that gap? Is it employee retention? Churn? What are the things that you're watching in your model to that gives you comfort? 'Cause this... You're big, and this is not a market share big. You're just big. There's a lot of moving parts. How do you have a span of control here?
The obvious question, Michael, is first, when you look at the way we're organized, you know, 15 areas here in the States and one in Canada, having the right leadership in all those areas is key. Obviously, our job in Houston is to support those folks. I always say our job, we don't service the customers every day. Our job is to remove obstacles and put those folks in a position to be successful. First and foremost is how are we organized and how are we supporting the business outside of what happens on 800 Capitol. The things that are on my dashboard, I mean, arguably a lot of things are on my dashboard, you can't focus on all of them. I think you picked up on one that's. We talk about people first, right? What does that mean?
You know, for us, like I'm sure a lot of folks in the audience here, the last handful of years have been challenging pre-pandemic into the pandemic, out of the pandemic. What's happened with the generational shift in labor, how are we addressing that? I think the good news is that this is still a people business, right? We are making a lot of efforts to optimize, automate, pick a phrase. At our core, we're still a people business, right? Us really getting more deliberate and intentional about how we're gonna retain people. Where are we gonna go and attract people? 'Cause if you just look at the stratification of the workforce now of who occupies our key frontline roles and the age of those folks, it's just math.
At some point, they're gonna end up leaving the workforce, right?
Right.
How do we make sure we extend the work life of those folks? A lot of that has to do with what we're doing around technology and automation and optimization. We can certainly extend the life of some of those roles. What are we doing and where are we fishing? What ponds are we fishing? 'Cause traditionally this industry has had folks out the front door saying, "Hey, I wanna come work for in this industry or for your company." That has clearly changed, and we've certainly recognized that, and that's a lot of what we've focused on the last two years about, first of all, making sure we're market competitive with wages, make sure we got a comprehensive benefits package. Those are table stakes now.
Right.
I would tell you, on the people front.
Do you have to bring in-house vocational training?
That's a good point. We actually have two dedicated training facilities we own and operate. One is out in Arizona, outside of Phoenix, and then we have another one in Florida. What we're doing there is we are bringing through, I forget the capacity off the top of my head. It's about 125 to 150 drivers, technicians, and or potential drivers that can cycle through these facilities. We have de-dedicated staffs there, and that is all they do. We're bringing in drivers. We're retraining drivers. We're bringing in drivers from outside the company. We're bringing folks from outside the industry. We're getting folks CDLs who don't have CDLs. We're training our technicians. Those are two areas we've made heavy investments, and we're happy with them. We're gonna continue to do that.
We also have to have made the frame, made the statement, we're gonna fish in other ponds. That part is changing. While we've invested it, very deliberately inside WM's walls, we're also doing things outside what we would traditionally call the kind of the recruiting efforts.
Part of my conversations have been this industry needing to tell its story. And there's whole levels of what that looks like. One of that telling that story is to a future employee base. Where's that conversation when? Are you inside high schools or are you in, at going in at eighth grade and starting? Where are you starting those conversations where you're demonstrating the appeal of this, one, there's a path. It's not just sit behind a truck for 25 years. There's a path. What are you doing there?
I think it's a, it's a multi-pronged approach. First of all, when I mentioned fishing in other ponds, we are talking to folks in high school. I think about, I'm dating myself now, but I remember sitting in the cafeteria in high school and who was there every quarter? The military was there.
Yep.
They were there all the time. There was a lot of folks who ended up going to the military 'cause of their recruiting efforts. When you think about that, we needed to get to folks younger in their, in their educational life, 'cause a lot of kids are coming out of school now, and they're deciding, "Do I wanna go on and take on four years of school and the debt that comes with it? What do I benefit from it? What's the return on that investment versus what are my other options?" When you think about roles in our industry, tech and trade jobs, I mean, those are very well-paying, family-supporting, roles that they can fill with great benefits. We just weren't telling our story. We need to be in high schools.
We need to be out in front of the military. We out in front of the women's groups where we can actually tell the story about what it means to come work in this industry and for WM.
I'm gonna have a whole conversation about fleet on a different level, but at its high, high level, has the truck been redesigned so it can accommodate the diversity of the workforce? You know, women are average heights are different. Men are average height is different. It's the hip to the foot is different. Have we done that?
We are in the process of doing that.
Yeah.
Have we done it? Absolutely not. 'Cause if you look at our numbers of how friendly we have been traditionally as an industry to the female population, it's not enough.
Right.
When you think about, as the example we talk about all the time, including last Thursday on the call, about we're doing to automate our residential line of business, right? Getting on and off the truck 800+ times a day is not everybody's built for that. If you get in a right-hand drive cab where you can, you can operate a joystick and service 1,000, 1,200, 1,400 carts a day, that job's a lot more appealing to a much broader, diverse set of folks. There's one example where I think we can make. We've made some progress but still have plenty of opportunity.
I know that we're talking about the driver and tech part, but I think it's also important to think about what happens in the rest of the organization. One of the things I'm most proud of is the receptivity that tomorrow's CEO, who we don't even know yet, is having toward this industry and to WM specifically, because we are now viewed as an innovator. We are viewed as a sustainability leader. The things that today's high school student cares about are things that we are really invested in. There's an enthusiasm about working for WM today across the employee base that it's really exciting about the future of this industry.
One of the measures of that, and we gotta move off of employees here for a second. One of the measures is the success rate in which you convert an inquiry. How— I mean, there's the backside of that is your retention. You keep them, more of them. The front side is, you know, do you have to recruit 10 people to get one, or are you recruiting five people and getting one? How has that improved?
First of all, that ratio, it's interesting 'cause Michael was at an all-time low during the pandemic, where everybody hung on to everybody. Nobody wanted to go anywhere.
Right.
for all the obvious reasons. As we came out of that, we saw our attrition rates go back to norm and then surpass that almost to peak levels. When we really kinda got into the details there, we realized there were some lessons learned. For the last probably two years, we've been very deliberate, site by site, in how, The culture that, you know, we are trying to build a culture for WM, but there's also 1,200 plus locations around the country, and they all have their unique set of challenges, different leadership. What we've done-
It's a local business.
It's a local business. What we've done in partnership with the field leadership, the business leadership, our HR team, is really have a strategy that is site by site to identify what the puts and takes are, what draws people in, and why they're leaving. It does vary from site to site, but the good news is our overall turnover rate's probably down about 450-500 basis points between drivers and technicians over the last 18 months.
Wow, that's a huge savings right there, just the recruiting process alone.
Well, if you think about You talk about efficiency and safety, right?
Mm-hmm.
However you define efficiency, but definitely safety. When you're turning folks over at that rate, you're never gonna be as efficient as you could, and your safety results are gonna struggle. That's one of the things we've seen over the last handful of quarters, is our safety results steadily improving, which to me is paramount.
Right. I wanna talk about buying from the perspective that you shouldn't do all the business you necessarily do. You don't need to do it for practice. Where are you in that life cycle for Waste Management and sort of cleaning up the, "We don't need to do this for practice?
I think the first line of business we talk about often and have for the last few quarters has been kind of our residential line of business. I think last quarter we traded off about a little less than 3% for the price results we've got. That's been the trend for the last handful of quarters. We're not intentionally shedding the business, we are making tough decisions where we can't get the right rate structure, the right contractual obligations in place. We have to make a decision on where to employ our capital.
Right.
We started to do that. It's not just about shedding that business. We are having a bunch of wins there at the same time, where we are re-upping with customers, franchises, municipalities who recognize the value of the service we provide and are willing to engage with us and pay an appropriate amount where we feel comfortable investing. I would also tell you, though, to Veena's point earlier about differentiation, it's not just residential, it's not just franchise business. Our national account business has been a place where we've had a ton of success over the last handful of years. I don't think it's about the fact that we've been a good position to service them.
I think it's about the suite of services we can offer that segment of the customers, which has been growing at a really great rate over the last couple of years.
You as a company say national accounts a lot to the stock market. What is a national account, so everybody actually understands what it means when you say national account? Because is it just it's a big brand and you're at 2,000 locations, or is it? How do you really approach it? Is it a truly national, coast to coast, or is it super regional? How do we think about that? What's the book of business? How much is it?
It's the Home Depots, it's the Walmarts, you know, it's Family Dollar Tree. It's all of those large customers who have a footprint across North America, where they can come to WM as a one-stop shop. Where that model used to be is in place of a broker model. That was, you know, viewing aggregation with one of the large national haulers as advantageous to dealing with a broker because you're dealing directly with the person that's going to also be serving most of your locations. Where we've differentiated that now is that we also can deliver insight and information to their sustainability goals and objectives by helping them understand the waste flow that we are managing on their behalf.
We have seen tremendous traction in that regard with information and data that is now a valuable resource to them and is giving us good traction from a pricing perspective. That book of business is still sub 10%, but it is growing, and it's the fastest growing segment of the commercial and industrial line.
If I was cynical about it, all those companies are the toughest to deal with from a purchasing standpoint. They're just gonna squeeze you to death on price. I remember under different management, the Home Depot contract traded big companies over time, and both of them at the time said, "Yeah, I'm just as happy I don't have it," 'cause it was almost zero margin. I mean, this should, you know. Help everybody understand that this isn't about the dummying down the margin. You're getting paid for the service, the value.
I think what's really important here is our customers speaking on our behalf essentially, because we've had what I'll call boomerangs, where those customers used to be solely price-focused and thinking about managing our service to them based on price and price alone, and those conversations are fundamentally different today. The boomerangs that I'm talking about, they will leave and go to a cheaper price model, and they come back very, very quickly. As a result of what we are seeing, it's not just those that come back, but those that are staying with different price increases than what we've provided in the past because we are providing a differentiated service in terms of that data and focus on sustainability and long-term investment in sustainability as a differentiator.
Let's segue to that then. I'm coming at this more from a perspective of what's... Like, on the recycling side, I think the big garbage, and it's not just public big garbage, but the bigger players with the balance sheets, the capital to do this are in fact the savior of recycling, that there's this massive recapitalization of the infrastructure that has to happen to meet the changing demand of the recycling economy. Where are you in that evolution, and how much of it is we need new things versus we can retrofit existing? Talk about where we are in that journey and what it means, not just the profit, but the change, the ability to change behavior of a marketplace.
This is my fifth year in the job here, Michael, and when I sat down with Jim when I took the job, one of the things on the agenda early on was how do we get recycling more healthy, right? I don't want to say fix it because it wasn't always broken. It was broken when the prices were down. It was great when the prices were up.
It's a pretty good return capital business, except when the prices were really terrible.
You know, one of the fundamental things he and I chatted about and Devina was how do we get this business healthy in any economic environment? I think what you heard from us in the last couple of quarters, you heard it last Thursday, you heard it from Tara and team on April 5th, is even at a combined rate of $54 a ton. You'll keep me honest here. I think that was the number for Q1.
Yeah.
It was even sub-50.
It's at 57 right now in April.
We're happy with those investments. When we think about the modernization of a plant, in a lot of ways, we have the shell of the building. We're pulling out old technology and putting in new technology. There's a few things that really come out. First and foremost is there is a meaningful change in our labor rates, right? With everything going on with labor, and as the rates go up higher, the arbitrage just gets that much stronger in terms of the business case. Then it's overall cost, right? Secondly, is we talk about the quality of materials, so right? You put the same 100 tons through a facility of a day, whatever the number is, we're getting better yield out of the same 100 tons.
The operating cost is lower, the product we're producing is better. You end up with capacity too, because these plants are 20-25% more efficient, if you will, after we've made the investment. For us, the litmus test has really been these plants are running exceptionally well, and they're producing great returns, great EBITDA, even in a low market. If we start from there, that gives us all the more conviction on the investments we continue to make.
In the context of the quality issue, what's the standard that the market's now demanding in order to service true circularity from a quality? I mean, is it 96%, 97% good enough, or does this have to be 3 nines?
No, I don't think it needs to be three nines, Michael. I think it depends on the type of material, right? What customers want from a fiber grade is gonna be different from what they want from plastic or metal, et cetera. I think the... What I would tell you is we've never had a problem moving in sourcing our material. That's part of the value of our brokerage business that we talk about often with no capital investment, low margin. That actually helps us aggregate almost two X what we process to be able to move that material. We've never really had a challenge domestically or even internationally moving that material.
In terms of the quality, I would tell you we haven't had the problem, I think, with the, with the investments I've done in these new plants has given it that much better quality going to our customers, and I think it just helps us be able to have consistent outlets for our folks.
Landfill gas, this is everybody's favorite topic du jour. What I think is important is you've been managing gas for proactively. If we take it Subtitle D as the threshold, you've been managing gas proactively for 27 years, 28 years, 29 years now. 1994, is that 29? That's my math. Yeah, 29 years. We're not doing anything different in the context. You're actively managing, you're just upgrading the quality or the upselling it. That right? That's a good conclusion. I mean, it, I'm not trying to oversimplify it, but let's just remind it. You know, all listeners here, you've been proactively doing this a long time.
We absolutely have. You're right, we've been doing this for almost 3 decades. On top of that, what we've been doing is looking at our portfolio and saying, because WM has retained optionality with the largest, most extensive fleet of landfill assets in the entire country, we have the ability to create more value from this. Our investment in a natural gas fleet has also extended our capacity to take full advantage of circularity, and as a result, maximize the economic returns of these investments.
While landfill gas to electricity has been part of the investment strategy for tens of years, we now are extending that on the natural gas front and the renewable energy that these facilities can produce over the long term is creating both economic and environmental utility that we think is going to really differentiate us for the long term.
Okay. The U.S. Congress just passed their debt ceiling, and they pulled the ITC out of it. We'll see if that survives into the Senate. Just an important message is you were gonna do these investments before an ITC existed, just to remind everybody.
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Right.
Great returns without the ITC.
Right. Maybe it changes the pace if it did really go away of what you're doing it, but it doesn't change the, we should do this.
The pace with which we were moving at it certainly was impacted once the ITC was off the table.
Yeah, yeah.
We were looking at.
'Cause it's got a sunset to it.
needing to maximize
Yeah. Yeah.
some of that. We won't slow down the pace relative to what we've talked about. We still think that everything we have planned, from capital asset purchases to permitting processes to all of the infrastructure investment, all of the back-office investment that needs to happen in order to maximize this value is on path to create that sustained value beginning in 2026.
Okay. There's a lot of confusion in my client base about the model, not Waste Management's model, the model, period. I try to keep these things simple 'cause I'm just a dumb farm kid, so it's easier for me if I keep it simple. There's the transportation part of it, which is you made the gas, you turn it into renewable natural gas. You put it in the pipeline, you get a credit. The refining world buys the credit. You get paid by that pipeline for the gas. If the voluntary buyer shows up, they're buying both of those, right?
Correct.
They're gonna buy the gas, but then they have to pay for the credit.
Yeah.
It's the same value metric. If it's two and 2.50-Summation is $26. It's $26 whether I'm doing transportation, it's $26 if I'm doing voluntary.
That's right.
Okay. There is confusion about that I've discovered recently. I'm like, "Really?" Okay. All right. The risk mitigation is about trying to create an averaging cost bucket. At its simplest level, why is 50% the right place to be at the risk mitigation?
The 50% is more two to three years out. What we're looking at is a staggered or laddered approach, where one year out we're looking at 70% to 90% managed. That's just in terms of making sure that WM retains the ability to maximize the value created. Longer term contracts, you pay up for those, right?
Right.
You give up the upside value of what it is that you're creating. We're gonna do the right thing in managing our responsibility to maximize the return of the investment we're making, but do so in a way that mitigates the risks that comes from volatility exposure from commodity-based businesses.
Okay.
A really structured approach to this is what we think is responsible and appropriate for managing a normal kind of budget cycle.
There's no way to hedge this at the moment. There's no financial hedge. You're a big company. You do a lot of commercial borrowing. You know, these are big people on the other side. You know, why aren't they showing up with a vehicle to create an economic financial hedge that would give you an incremental point of control?
In all good humor, I'm sure they'll come, and the banks look for lots of good ways to.
Make money.
-more money.
Yeah.
It's our responsibility to be sure we just don't use them as an easy button and offload something that is value-creating for the WM shareholder. And we'll continue to think about that the right way. You know, the same can be said in the recycling paper part of the business, right?
Well, you've done a great job de-risking that 'cause you turned it.
Exactly.
a manufacturing business.
Exactly.
Yeah. I'm switching slight gears. Emissions monitoring is one of those things for me that, if somebody says to me what keeps me up at night, it's I wake up going for the industry that some third party will gain control of the debate about emissions monitoring, specifically around your landfills. Where is the industry? Where is Waste Management from a leadership standpoint in moving the dialogue to a highly defensible, data-driven, quality emissions monitoring? Which when it really gets there, maybe you're not producing as much gas as they think or you're producing more, but okay, so what? It's high-quality data. The current methods-
Well, there's.
It's a technical term.
Yeah, it's a technical term.
Yeah.
Well, there's the modeled versus measured, right?
Right.
For years it was modeled, and now we're moving through. I just actually coincidentally spent some time with that team, Tara, I did last week. We only have six minutes left. It would take me an hour and a half to explain to you all the different efforts.
Gee, did we really blow through that half hour? We did.
All the efforts that are gone, I do think to your point, though, the industry's best suited to be able to drive the conversation with the regulators about what's going on with solid waste landfills in this example. I can tell you, for us, we are engaged with all the different constituencies to make sure that there's a pragmatic, practical approach. There's a lot going on in the technology space, right?
Yeah.
There's satellite, aerial, ground. I mean, you go down the list.
Right.
In any one of those buckets, there is dozens of technology providers who are out there. I think what's encouraging, and again, I just spent some time with them, I feel really good about the conversation that's happening between us and those constituencies and the regulators, and I think we're driving down a path where we're gonna find the right technology solution to be able to measure as opposed to model.
Model.
this information.
Right.
I think that way, if you went back a year, Tara and I were just talking about that, if you went back a year ago, at least under our tent from where we were then to where this team is now, we are light years ahead of where we were, and I feel like we're on a really good track to answer that question the right way.
Okay. Do you think it's continuous emissions monitoring is where we land?
I don't know if continuous emissions monitoring is where we land, Michael, but I would tell you there's still a few chapters in that book to be written.
Okay. carbon sequestration. You flare. I mean, you know, You're making CO2. Is there a way to capture that and sequester it and capture the economic value of that?
I think first and foremost, we talked about capturing about 45% of it now beneficially and getting that number up to 65. That last 35% is clearly an option. I think sequestration is something that we continue to.
Right.
-plan out a path. I can't say that we have identified exactly what the opportunity looks like, but I will leave you with it as an opportunity we continue to pursue.
Right. It should be. I mean, as an industry-
Yes.
it should be.
Yes.
It's, I mean, you know, the flare is a physical element. You can capture that once it's converted, so is there a way? Okay.
Sure.
There's some optionality there. I don't even wanna talk about the eRIN 'cause until they actually get the final ruling, who knows what it's gonna look like. You know, hopefully, the smarter people wake up and realize they ought to come back to the generator instead of the OE, but we'll see what happens. Maybe it'll happen in June, maybe it won't. On the fleet side, you have a big California exposure. There's a big ruling happened on Friday in California. I haven't found yet anybody in the engine side who says they can meet 2024 for zero emissions on-
2034.
Well, there's also a 2024.
Oh, yeah.
-issue as well. How do you run your business?
I think what's really important here is that we are one element of a bigger problem, and that bigger problem is the move that needs to be made to really sustainably create the infrastructure that would be needed in order to support these initiatives. We can buy the trucks if the trucks are available. We replace about 10% of our fleet annually.
There's 18,000 of them? Yeah, yeah.
We'll make those investments. We've proven time and again that we're willing and able to make those investments, because we look at our business both economically responsible and environmentally responsible, is our goal. Unless and until the infrastructure can support that type of demand across all of California and then North America, we just think that a lot more has to happen between now and then.
You may not have been here in the room. We had Laura Ferrante from Waste Alternatives, which is representing the Trade Association in California, and one of her comments was that CARB doesn't care. They pass the rules, they don't care if there's infrastructure or not.
We-
How do you run your business? That's the part that I. I mean, I get you're at 65%, 70% CNG. The garbage industry is more than happy to, you know, as long as it makes sense economically, they'll do it, but you don't come at this with a perceived view. How do you run your business? I mean, it's not a trivial number. It's 8%, 10% of your revenues is in California. How do you run your business?
Well, I would tell you that the fleet we have in California is as advanced from a low emission, zero emission standpoint as it can be right now, Michael, from a technology standpoint. I also think, you know, we've been operating in California, there's others here who have too. I think at the right time and the right place, there's an element of pragmatism that has to enter in the conversation. If you look at some of the movement with CARB over the years, they've always been very aggressive with all the right intentions. I also think there's a level of pragmatism that enters that conversation.
When you look at the size and the of our fleet and the heavy-duty fleet in California, and practically how you get to zero emissions, there's clearly some work that has to be done, and I think a lot of the legislation you're talking about now is probably not in the Class 8 vehicle category. It's lower down on the food chain, which is the right place to start. I do think this is gonna continue to develop over time.
I agree, but I also I mean, based on what I read on Friday, they're not giving you credit, for instance, that you have CNG trucks. Which is like, wait a minute. That's a lower emission vehicle. It's a life cycle, lower cost vehicle to operate. Anyway.
I think part of this comes back to what you were saying earlier about our responsibility to continue to tell our story. We've got team members in the room and at WasteExpo this week who are doing just that with us. It's not just telling our story to manufacturers and of vehicles and infrastructure, it's telling our story to regulators. We will continue to do that for the good of the organization.
In our 12 seconds left, PFAS. I've argued that PFAS is, one, an investable thesis, and two, I think that the solid waste industry is actually the long-term short long-term solution, meaning until they find a form of for destruction, you sequester it, and therefore the perfect closed loop is sourced to the landfill and that. Am I wrong thinking that way?
No, I would tell. We're out of time, but I had all these great answers written down for that 'cause I knew you were gonna ask us about it. Like, I heard Mr. McGinnis earlier, and I'm like, "Boy, I got nothing on that guy." Whatever he said, no, it was really helpful. No, I think you're right, Michael. I think. Listen, landfills are considered a repository for those right now.
Yeah.
We're gonna continue to stay.
Passive repository.
Engaged in those conversations. I think the passive issue is something we're very active in that conversation to make the industry and the company.
Yeah.
are seen as just that, and that was a phrase that we used earlier a few different times, so.
Okay. Very good. Well, we are out of time, and I suppose I should try and stay on schedule for this second half of the day. Thank you both for joining us.
Thank you.
Thank you.