Waste Management 2006 Annual Report Download - page 8

“What Waste Management did in 2006 can be summed up in three words:
Green at Work. It was a year of recognizing our responsibilities as a leader,
steward, partner, and pioneer. It was a year of absolute clarity around the
work we must do to live up to these responsibilities and to earn a place
among the ranks of great American companies.”
Our company had one of its finest years
ever in 2006. First, our company’s financial
performance for the year revealed unprecedented
consistency and strength. During 2006, Waste
Management achieved its main financial objectives:
We increased income from operations, expanded
operating margins, improved return on invested capital,
and produced strong free cash flow, which we returned
to shareholders. The company has not seen a record
like this in years.
We achieved much more in 2006, all with measurable
results. We improved our pricing and profitability.
We lowered costs and improved productivity. We got
better at managing our business and our assets. We shed
business with lower margins and divested operations
that no longer contributed to our strategic direction.
And we continued to make extraordinary progress in
improving our safety record, achieving a 22 percent
year-over-year improvement and ending the year with our
best record ever. All these accomplishments reflect the
hard work we invested in achieving our strategic goals,
which are deeply rooted in engaging our customers,
empowering our employees, improving returns to our
shareholders, serving our communities, and protecting
the environment.
Often, companies measure success by comparing
themselves to the competition. They focus on doing
exactly what their competitors do and doing it better,
faster, and cheaper. We believe that the only way to set
our company apart from others in our industry is to do
things differently. Our objective is not to play the same
game better, but to change the playing field and to
compete on a completely new level.
We’re changing the game by focusing on three things
that great companies have in common: the best assets,
the best data, and the best people.
Our assets have long been a particular
strength of Waste Management. Take our
landfills, for example. As the largest network of landfills
in our industry, they serve a far greater purpose than
most people realize. More than just repositories for
waste, our landfills are a source of clean, renewable
energy, producing a steady, reliable supply of fuel that
powers communities and businesses. In addition, our
landfills provide more than 17,000 acres of protected
wildlife habitat that are managed in partnership with
environmental agencies. Across America, our landfills
have set aside thousands of acres for all to enjoy as
athletic fields, parks, and recreational facilities.
We have other assets that we believe are working in
our favor. We have thousands of trucks and thousands
of people who are responsible for driving them,
maintaining them, and routing them. The effort we
invested in 2006 in managing these assets more
productively paid off in big ways: We saved more than
a million hours in labor. We reduced our operating costs,
in spite of higher fuel prices. And we saved millions of
dollars by keeping our trucks in better working order
and in service more of the time.
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To Our Shareholders, Customers, Employees, and Communities: