Sustainability

Sustainability at GFL

Since our inception, in support of our vision, we have made significant investments in new technology and in the innovation of management and operating processes. These investments reflect our commitment to providing sustainable solutions that are also value-enhancing initiatives for our business. Examples of these investments include:

• Material recovery facilities or MRFs that employ advanced sorting technologies and drive diversion from landfill, preserve virgin resources, reduce GHG emissions and contribute to a lower carbon future. GFL’s Sustainability Action Plan described in our 2021 Sustainability Report includes our commitment to increase recyclables recovered at our MRFs by 40% by 2030.
• Landfill gas to energy facilities that capture landfill gas and convert the captured gas into renewable natural gas (RNG) for use as electricity by households and commercial establishments or as a source of fuel for vehicles. Our Sustainability Action Plan includes our goal to double our beneficial use of biogas by 2030.
• A growing compressed natural gas (CNG) fleet that uses clean natural gas to power solid waste collection vehicles. CNG emits less greenhouse gas per kilometre (or mile) than traditional diesel fuel. Our Sustainability Action Plan includes a goal to have alternative fuel vehicles instead of diesel fuel vehicles in 50% of our annual replacements in our solid waste fleet in the United States.  We have also set a goal to have 85% of our CNG fleet in the U.S. powered by RNG by 2030.
• Organics facilities that recycle organic waste to produce high-quality compost products, fertilizers, and other soil supplements. By providing a commercially viable environmental solution, communities are able to help reduce their GHG footprint by keeping organic waste out of landfills.
• Soil recycling facilities that remediate contaminated soils otherwise destined for landfill disposal for reuse in construction and development projects. The use of soil recycling facilities not only reduces construction costs by supporting beneficial reuse of soils but also reduces GHGs from trucking to more remote disposal locations.
• Wood recycling facilities that efficiently recover and reprocess wood waste to produce a range of products and materials including garden mulch and biofuels.

Collectively known as ‘Team Green’ – a name that unites all GFL employees – our talented workforce has enabled us to grow into the environmental solutions leader we are today. Employee-related goals that form part of our Sustainability Action Plan are aimed at building upon our health and safety priorities, improving employee engagement, providing our employees with opportunities to develop their careers and implementing our diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging roadmap. Our commitments include:

• GFL’s Safe for Life Program, which is our roadmap to achieving our Total Recordable Incident Rate goal of 2.0 or less.
• Our Women in Waste (WIW) program, a diversity strategy aimed at increasing the participation of women across GFL. Building on our experience with WIW we are also implementing a multi-year strategy and roadmap to build greater Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging (DEI&B) across GFL.
• Plans designed to increase employee engagement and retention including employee engagement surveys, living wage assessments, an employee scholarship fund and employee relief fund.

GFL has also been committed to giving back to our communities. Our community involvement goals in our Sustainability Action Plan will increase and broaden our community outreach. This includes increasing funding for our Full Circle Project, GFL’s charitable giving program, which allows GFL’s customers to identify charitable categories for our annual giving commitment and our employees to build long term relationships with local charities within the customer identified categories.

More information on these programs and our complete Sustainability Action Plan can be found in our 2021 Sustainability Report.

OUR FUTURE

GFL recognizes that we play a critical role in providing the environmental solutions needed to transition to a more circular and low-carbon future.

Our Sustainability Action Plan formalizes and broadens GFL’s sustainability efforts and will be our guide to:

• Increase the avoided GHG emissions for our customers through the sustainable solutions that we provide. This will be achieved by increasing the resource recovery and recycling solutions that we offer our customers, as well as the beneficial use of landfill gas.
• Reduce the direct GHG emissions from our operations. This will be achieved through higher gas capture rates at our landfills and continuing to pursue opportunities to increase the use of low-carbon fuels in our fleet.
• Increase the sustainable environmental innovations that come from within our business by continuing to identify and invest in our entrepreneurial and innovative culture through our award-winning[1] Environmental Innovation Program.

We believe the passion and focus that we share with our employees, customers and communities to be Green for Life will return shared value for all our stakeholders.

2021 Sustainability Reports and Documents
2021 Sustainability Report
Safe for Life Program
GFL EMS Framework

[1] https://gflenv.com/news-media-events-detail/gfl-awarded-seal-award/