For more than eight decades, California Waste Recovery Systems (Cal-Waste) has been serving residential, commercial and industrial customers in the California cities of Lodi, Galt, Stockton, Elk Grove, Sacramento and Angels Camp, as well as in Alpine, Calaveras, San Joaquin and Sacramento counties.

As one of the largest waste collection and material recovery operations in its region, Cal-Waste offers recycling services, green waste collection and trash services.

To help meet a state requirement to recycle 75 percent of all commercial waste generated in California, Cal-Waste opened an $11 million material recovery facility (MRF) at its headquarters in Galt in 2013 featuring equipment supplied by San Diego-based CP Group.

In late 2019, after recognizing the need to reduce contamination and in light of the declining global market value for some recyclables, Cal-Waste invested roughly $20 million to upgrade its MRF, again selecting CP Group as its equipment provider. The upgrade was designed to increase the facility’s throughput in addition to improving the purity of recovered recyclables.

“We built the MRF in 2012 and learned a lot about the new recycling markets and what the demands were, [and] it was really very lax,” Dave Vaccarezza, owner of Cal-Waste, says. “But then we watched the standards tighten back up to where anything above 1 percent is considered contamination,” he continues.

“Knowing that, we’ve always worked on quality and knew that if we’re going to stay in the game and we’re going to deal with China’s Sword and these new standards, we have to be able to produce a superior product to stay in the market,” Vaccarezza adds.

“When it came time to make the switch, we went right to CP and said, ‘OK, we want to go to the next generation,’ and that’s what they brought us,” he says.

A modern fit

Cal-Waste’s recent total system upgrade included the addition of a primary auger screen, a glass breaker screen, an AWScreen, a CPScreen, a scalping auger screen and five MSS optical sorters.

Housed in a 100,000-square-foot tilt-up concrete building, the MRF’s operations encompass receiving, screening, sorting, baling, marketing and shipping of recyclables generated by residential and commercial customers.

Operating in two shifts, Cal-Waste deploys its recently added optical sorters on its mixed paper and plastics lines to remove contamination.

“We have optical sorters that handle the mixed paper element, so we’re able to get more out of mixed paper and [can] take chipboard out of that stream in some cases,” Vaccarezza says. “Another major thing that our optics [sort] is plastics, and those optics are able to identify all seven plastic types.”

He adds that the company is producing natural high-density polyethylene (HDPE), colored HDPE, clear polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and colored PET.

Vaccarezza says adding the optical sorters has “opened [us up to] specific markets, like in the chipboard market, and the plastic markets, [because] we’re able to get it down to exactly what they want.”

One of the many components of the recent upgrade, Vaccarezza says the primary auger screen “takes the burden depth down to a much more manageable level and does a great job of spreading everything out so there are no big lumps and clumps.”

It also has allowed Cal-Waste to reduce the number of sorters on the presort line from eight to four. Even with the reduction in workforce, the MRF has increased its capacity from 11 tons per hour (tph) to 30 tph.

Previously, the MRF was capable of processing 150 tons of recyclables per day, totaling more than 54,000 tons per year. With the upgrade, Cal-Waste is currently processing about 65,000 tons per year, which is somewhere around 300 to 400 tons per day, Vaccarezza says.

“We’ve done more than 30 tons an hour, and we’re still fine-tuning it in terms of the product that is coming out on the back side,” Vaccarezza says. “CP is working with us very closely to get the system all tuned up.”

The road ahead

Since Cal-Waste began operating the updated system, Vaccarezza says downtime has dropped significantly.

“In our old plant, I’d say we’d have two hours of downtime every nine-hour shift. Now, we’re down to maybe less than an hour, so we’re getting a good six-and-a-half to seven-hour runtime on it every eight- to nine-hour shift,” he says.

Vaccarezza credits this to the new equipment and to the software that comes with it. With more efficient rotating screens and a new supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, he says the retrofit has been a major time-saver.

“The [new] system has what’s called SCADA, which is basically a dashboard that tells you how fast your plant is running live. In the past, you assessed the plant based on how fast the motors were running; you really didn’t have a concept of weight, and there were no scales to really be able to measure your production live. Whereas, now we have a volumetric scanner that tells you accurately how much volume is going through the machine.”

Cal-Waste has been running the upgraded system since January, and while Vaccarezza says the company is still fine-tuning it, he thinks the system is living up to its performance expectations.

He adds that Cal-Waste views this new equipment as a foundation that the facility can build on over the next five to seven years, and the company plans to begin extracting material from the residual line to create engineered fuels or animal bedding products.

Although the updated MRF has been highly efficient, Vaccarezza says contamination in incoming material is still a reality that Cal-Waste must deal with. According to the company, contamination levels can vary by community and by program and range from 18 to 42 percent.

Vaccarezza says ongoing community outreach and education are critical to reducing contamination.

“I think that the key to all of this is really public education,” he says. “One of the things that we recently have been able to present to the Sacramento/San Joaquin markets is a unified message so that all customers understand what’s recyclable and what isn’t recyclable.”

Each of Cal-Waste’s residential carts now includes information on what can be put in the recycling bin. “If we can get the consistency on our outreach, I think that that’s really the key to making our machinery work even better,” Vaccarezza says.

This originally appeared in the Nov. issue of Recycling Today. The author is assistant editor of Waste Today. She can be contacted via email at hrischar@gie.net.

Whether because of growth opportunities or a perceived lack of exposure to the worst impacts of economic cycles, waste services companies seem to have remained in good stead with investors in 2020. This is despite the fact that 2020 will long be remembered as a year of extreme volatility caused by a global pandemic.

While backing those responsible for the proper handling of waste (including medical waste) during a pandemic represents a potential sensible play in the eyes of some investors, the overarching desire by corporations and some governments to divert municipal solid waste (MSW) from landfills has served to attract investors looking to put their money to work in a sector poised for growth.

The combination of reliability and the potential emergence of disruptive recycling or waste-to-energy technology has helped keep merger and acquisition (M&A) activity vibrant in the waste sector, despite all that COVID-19 and the economic downturn have thrown at the economy.

A lot to overcome

The double-digit decline in GDP that hit the world’s developed economies in the second quarter had an abrupt and widespread impact on M&A activity.

According to Vancouver, Canada-based Canaccord Genuity, the second quarter “represented the lowest level of global M&A activity in 16 years, [with] a year-over-year decline of 62 percent.”

Investors did not remain on the sidelines for long, according to the firm, with the third quarter seeing transaction values increase by 160 percent compared to the previous quarter and, perhaps more remarkably, by 33 percent year over year.

An early October online article by Industrial Equipment News referred to the third quarter as entailing a “$1 trillion rebound” in M&A activity in the United States, calling it an “80 percent surge from the second quarter’s $555.9 billion” level, creating M&A’s “strongest third quarter by deal value in more than a decade.”

An analyst quoted by the publication commented that “a lot of that has to do with pent-up demand and a lot of conversations happening in the spring.” Another said the downturn and subsequent recovery gave potential buyers enough time to “understand a little bit of what the pandemic meant to business models” of companies they were considering purchasing.

That pause was true not just for fund managers seeking companies to buy, but also for most larger corporations that do some acquiring of their own—including in the waste sector.

“COVID-19 did result in our team taking a brief pause (45 to 60 days) on our M&A activity, as the business adjusted to the new environment,” states Bob Cappadona, chief operations officer of the North American Environmental Solutions and Services business unit of France-based Veolia.

After that roughly two-month pause, says Cappadona, “Our M&A evaluation process resumed to pre-pandemic levels.”

That return to research and investing is likely not a surprise to Effram E. Kaplan, managing director and a principal of investment bank Brown, Gibbons, Lang, & Co. (BGL). While there can be “some importance” tied to the timing of a transaction, Kaplan says, “Management teams must remain hyper-focused on developing and adhering to a strategic plan. Vision and execution are critical when assessing value.”

As 2020 turns to 2021, public health and economic issues have been joined by the likelihood of considerable gridlock at the federal government level. Although reasons to shy away from M&A activity continue to exist, the pattern of investors thus far has been to keep seeking opportunities.

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Capital connections

Announced acquisitions in the waste and recycling sector in 2020 ranged in size. One of the largest got its start well before 2020 or COVID-19 was a factor—the $4.6 billion acquisition of Florida-based Advanced Disposal by Houston-based Waste Management Inc. (WM).

The acquisition was announced in April 2019, but then faced a lengthy delay in part because the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) insisted some Advanced Disposal assets would have to be divested to a buyer other than WM to maintain competition in some regions.

Upon the deal getting final approval in late October, WM President and CEO Jim Fish remarked, “We are excited to reach the finish line on this compelling acquisition, and I would like to welcome the Advanced Disposal team members to the WM family. The acquisition expands Waste Management’s reach and positions us for significant earnings and cash flow growth.”

Among the moves made to receive the DOJ’s approval, Canada-based GFL Environmental Inc. paid WM $835 million to acquire 32 collection operations (involving more than 375 trucks), 36 transfer stations and 18 landfills in several U.S. states.

Another large deal involved the purchase of Texas-based WCA Waste Corp. by GFL Environmental. That $1.2 billion deal was finalized in early October.

Other acquisitions announced in the third quarter included:

• Vermont-based Casella Waste acquiring Pinto Trucking in the Buffalo, New York, market;
• Charlotte, North Carolina-based Meridian Waste adding a Missouri-based hauler to its portfolio;
• Houston-based Stella Environmental buying a North Carolina firm;
• Houston-based American AllWaste LLC acquiring Austin-based Walker Aero Enterprises LLC and its affiliated companies, which include JV Dirt & Loam, Daisy Works and Sheridan Environmental;
• Texas-based Quest Resource Holding Corp. adding the North Carolina firm Green Remedies Waste and Recycling Inc. to its portfolio; and
• Michigan-based Priority Waste adding a Detroit-area firm’s operations to its account base.

Smaller transactions can represent a hidden but significant part of the waste M&A landscape, according to Andy Schwartz, managing director and co-head of the waste and environmental services practice of St. Petersburg, Florida-based Raymond James.

“While many of us remain focused on the sizable, headline-worthy deals happening in the industry, there have been numerous smaller, under-the-radar transactions,” said Schwartz in a September interview with Waste Today.

Kaplan and Cappadona were among the panelists at the mid-October 2020 Corporate Growth Conference.

Heading into that event, Schwartz told Waste Today, “Large consolidators are consistently spending hundreds of millions of dollars on M&A annually, both pre-COVID and through the COVID pandemic. A lot of transactions are taking place, and multiples remain at historically elevated levels.”

Reached a couple of weeks after the event ended in early November, Kaplan said waste services have indeed gained the attention of capital markets participants, and part of the reason is greater familiarity with the sector.

Niches and knowledge

In addition to the market’s increasing familiarity with the waste and environmental sector—which Kaplan says BGL has been focused on developing—Kaplan indicates there is diversity within the waste and recycling sector that can garner M&A interest from investors with a wide variety of backgrounds and strategies.

Some aspects of recycling can be valued differently, and appeal to select investment strategies, says Kaplan. “Recycling is more aligned with commodities volatility, whereas waste-to-value is closer to a hybrid fee-based and commodity-based revenue model; value propositions vary here,” he comments. “In addition, there is an onset of investors, including those focused on infrastructure, that, while interested in revenue quality, also put an increasing level of value on hard assets.” (For more on recycling M&A activity, see the sidebar “Will green yield green?”)

However, as sustainability and carbon emissions reduction have become more important for accomplishing landfill diversion goals in waste, “There are business models that have been created to adhere to zero waste or waste minimization policies that can [garner] a fee-for-service business model outcome,” Kaplan remarks.

Some of these new opportunities and several existing ones can be considered as niche sectors of the waste industry. Here, says Kaplan, often there is room for consolidation.

"Acquirers are still active and looking to invest in M&A, and valuations remain high,” –Andy Schwartz, managing director, Raymond James

He points to liquid wastes, energy sector byproducts, and nonhazardous and hazardous waste streams emanating from the utility, industrial and infrastructure markets as those where additional consolidation is likely, creating “a great strategy for capital markets to access.”

Veolia’s Cappadona sees the same thing, saying, “We continue to be interested in growing our hazardous and special waste business, and plan to do that with internal investments and select acquisitions.”

In an analysis of the third quarter earnings report of industrial waste services company Clean Harbors, Norwell, Massachusetts, Michael E. Hoffman of Baltimore-based Stifel writes, “The U.S. industrial economy [continues] to recover. Factor in significant cost controls enacted in response to the pandemic, and Clean Harbors handily beats consensus.”

The firm’s positive earnings report, writes Hoffman, “was done the old-fashioned way—improving business fundamentals on a leaner cost structure to drive better incremental margins.”

Kaplan says BGL is “very optimistic about the markets,” in part because of what the firm sees as long-term trends in capital migrating from public to private markets and what it views as the increasing efficiency of the private capital markets.

BGL is seeing a steady stream of transactions “across the board” in the waste sector, he says, pointing to the involvement of middle-market investors. “The movement from public equity investing to private equity and debt continues to gain attractiveness,” states Kaplan.

Schwartz expresses the same optimism, telling Waste Today, “Overall, deals are still getting done, acquirers are still active and looking to invest in M&A, and valuations remain high.”

The author is a senior editor with the Recycling Today Media Group and can be contacted at btaylor@gie.net.

Through a joint venture formed in December 2017, Novi, Michigan-based Aria Energy and London-based BP have worked together to market and distribute renewable low-carbon fuel to U.S. customers through the development of landfill gas (LFG) to renewable natural gas (RNG) projects across the country.

Since the venture’s establishment, the energy partners have teamed with Republic Services, Phoenix, to develop four RNG projects at the company’s landfills in Canton, Michigan; Millington, Tennessee; Memphis, Tennessee; and Oklahoma City.

Aria, one of the largest developers of LFG infrastructure in the county, is charged with overseeing the projects and processing and purifying biogas from the landfill into RNG. BP then transports the RNG into the interstate natural gas pipeline grid and markets it to renewable energy customers.

Most recently, the companies announced the start-up of a new LFG to RNG project at Republic’s South Shelby Landfill in Memphis, Tennessee, in August. The project, which supports Republic’s commitment to send 50 percent more landfill gas to beneficial reuse by 2030, can produce the equivalent of nearly 33,250 gallons of gasoline daily.

“Renewable energy is a key element of Republic Services’ long-term sustainability platform,” Pete Keller, Republic Services vice president of recycling and sustainability, said in a release. “We are committed to sending 50 percent more biogas to beneficial reuse in the next 10 years, and projects like South Shelby Landfill will help us meet that goal.”

CONVERTING WASTE

Keller says the South Shelby Landfill was an ideal site for the RNG project due to its proximity to pipeline and high gas production.

“From an infrastructure standpoint, when you have a landfill that’s producing a lot of gas, [it has] a lot of site life left … and you can get that into existing distribution infrastructure. That’s what makes these projects feasible,” Keller told Waste Today.

"From an infrastructure standpoint, when you have a landfill that’s producing a lot of gas, [it has] a lot of site life left … and you can get that into existing distribution infrastructure. That’s what makes these projects feasible,” –Pete Keller, Republic Services vice president of Recycling and Sustainability

He adds, “We’ve [actually] had a landfill gas project at South Shelby for a number of years, but previously it was not to produce high-Btu gas for pipeline. We had a medium-Btu project there for, let’s call it the last 20 years, and that fuel was used in a nearby industrial boiler as an alternative fuel for heat and energy.”

The South Shelby RNG project will instead process the landfill gas into low-carbon RNG—an upgraded, methane-rich product that can be used to fuel natural gas vehicle fleets. Use of this low-carbon fuel results in approximately 50 percent lower greenhouse gas emissions than from equivalent gasoline or diesel-fueled vehicles.

“Landfill gas is generally about 50 percent methane and 50 percent carbon dioxide (CO2), there’s a very small amount of oxygen, some nitrogen and some other constituents in landfill gas as well,” says Keller. “The other projects that we’ve done with BP and Aria are substantially identical. So, [we were] looking to isolate that methane component of the landfill gas, clean it up such that it’s 99 percent methane and inject that into existing natural gas pipelines.”

According to Keller, the LFG is collected by drilling vertical wells in the waste and connecting those wellheads to lateral piping, which transports the gas to a collection pipe using a vacuum induction system. Once all of the gas is collected into a single pipe, Keller says it is put through a series of different pieces of equipment to remove excess moisture, particulates and other impurities.

At South Shelby, this is done through a technology called pressure swing absorption (PSA) that is used to separate some specific types of gas from a greater mixture of gases under pressure. The technology, also known as the molecular sieve process, typically employs compression, moisture removal and hydrogen sulfide removal steps.

“[With PSA,] you would inject gas into a pressure chamber and put that gas under pressure at ambient temperatures, but inside of that pressure chamber, you have certain materials that would absorb CO2 and not [methane]. Then you can evacuate methane from the chamber, take the pressure of the chamber, and then the CO2 is released in a subsequent stage,” Keller says.

Once the raw biogas is converted, the subsequent RNG has a methane content of 90 percent or greater. Typically, RNG injected into a natural gas pipeline has a methane content between 96 and 98 percent, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) says.

Photo credit: Courtesy of Aria Energy

A GROWING MARKET

With the role of transporting the RNG fuel to renewable energy markets, BP says it first focuses on getting the fuel into a market that would create both renewable identification numbers (RINS) and low-carbon fuel standards (LCFS) credits.

“We do that via our affiliate, North American Gas and Power (NAGP), and they actually act as physical buyer of the RNG and reseller of the RNG, both to the product sold and then on top of that, to get the product delivered into either California CNG stations or outside the state,” says Sean Reavis, senior vice president global environmental products for BP.

Reavis says BP will deliver most of the produced RNG to Clean Energy Fuels Corp., Newport Beach, California, via a margin share agreement where the fuel will be dispersed to the company’s network of 550 stations across the country.

“The other place that we take the gas is to the voluntary market,” Reavis says. “This is a market that is really growing for us. The voluntary market is typically [entities] like utilities and manufacturers that want to alter their buying practices away from whatever fuel they’re using now. Many of them are using natural gas, and they want to blend RNG into that portfolio.”

The EPA says reducing methane emissions through RNG projects can help achieve near-term beneficial impacts in mitigating global climate change. For facilities that are not already required to mitigate such emissions, considering RNG can help reduce methane emissions significantly.

Helping reduce emissions was a major incentive for BP, as the company announced a new ambition in February to become net zero by 2050 or sooner. This includes an aim of installing methane measurement at all of BP’s major oil and gas processing sites by 2023 and reducing its methane intensity of operations by 50 percent.

“Part of the ambitions we set out at the beginning of the year carried along the fact that we wanted to bring others along with us and show them how they can reduce their carbon footprint. … Starting with landfills is a great place because that obviously is a place where methane is escaping and allows the [local municipalities] to be involved in trying to clean up the region there,” says Reavis.

Reavis adds, “We are finding that regardless of whether you’re a fleet owner or manufacturer, people recognize the reduction in carbon that comes from RNG over natural gas. So, people, either on a voluntary basis or fleet owners that just decide they’re going [to pursue] fuels other than diesel fuel, are [beginning to] replace their fuel with natural gas because of the lower carbon intensity.”

The author is the assistant editor of Waste Today and can be reached at hrischar@gie.net.

Change can be incremental when it comes to waste collection vehicles. While these workhorses of the road aren’t adorned with near the bells and whistles that come standard on many late-model passenger vehicles, some manufacturers are starting to equip trucks with new safety features to better protect drivers.

Waste Pro, Longwood, Florida, announced on July 27 that it had become the first waste company to purchase Autocar ACX severe duty cabover vehicles outfitted with Advanced Driver Assist System (ADAS) technology designed by Paris-based WABCO.

According to Waste Pro, these vehicles “set a new standard for safety for drivers, customers and communities” thanks to the intuitive technology embedded in the trucks.

Specifically, these vehicles feature six advanced safety features meant to help protect drivers on the road, including:

• Electronic stability control systems (ESC) that actively intervene when the vehicle is understeering or oversteering in order to maintain vehicle stability
• Rollover stability control systems (RSC) that intervene when the vehicle is at risk of a driver-induced rollover event
• Advanced emergency braking systems (AEBS) where the vehicle detects an impending collision and actively engages emergency brakes
• Forward collision warning (FCW) where the driver is visibly and audibly warned of an impending collision
• Stationary lane departure warning (SLDW) where a steady light located on the A-pillar will illuminate with an audible warning when the driver is veering into another lane; and
• Blind spot detection (BSD) that incorporates a flashing light located on the A-pillar that warns the driver of a vehicle in his or her blind spot.

Cliff Buck, director of national accounts for Autocar, says that the company had worked in conjunction with WABCO over the course of two years to integrate the company’s ADAS technology into its chassis. This technology, which WABCO first introduced to the commercial vehicle industry in 2008, is designed to alert motorists of dangerous driving behavior and obstacles that may be difficult to detect.

Although the integration might seem like a no-brainer, Buck notes that there were several challenges the company had to overcome during the testing phase to prove the system’s functionality.

“While the automotive industry has successfully utilized similar technology for a number of years, its use has proven to be a serious challenge in the refuse industry and other specialized markets,” Buck says. “As part of Autocar’s efforts to address these challenges, Autocar built a custom test chassis last September, which included the ADAS technology. The test chassis then started its track and on-road testing in early October of last year. With the numerous truck configurations Autocar offers to its customers, the testing had to be extensive in order to prove functionality, reliability and increased safety over the range of its axle configurations, shifting centers of gravity, and different weight ratings.”

Buck says that these tests were performed in all road, traffic and weather conditions—including winter testing in Michigan’s harsh climate—to ensure consistent performance. The company also made sure that the ADAS hardware would be subject to rigorous testing to ensure that it would handle the severe-duty environment of the refuse industry.

A welcomed addition

Investing in safety technology for its collection operations is nothing new for Waste Pro. According to the company, trucks are outfitted with the latest onboard camera and video monitoring systems, fleet management software, safety lighting and steering and braking systems to ensure top performance.

However, before investing in a given solution, there is a significant amount of internal discussion that takes place to weigh the pros and cons of adopting various technologies.

According to Dave Kutschinski, vice president of fleet and maintenance at Waste Pro, the company sought input from a number of team members when deciding on the merits of investing in Autocar’s trucks with ADAS technology.

After discussing and vetting the technologies in house, Waste Pro decided these driver safety features had the potential to give operators the tools they need to be safer behind the wheel.

“This technology has been available in the automotive industry since at least early 2010 from various car manufacturers, and we have monitored the various safety technologies coming to market for over 20 years with the focus on identifying those technologies that provide and enhance the safety of our vehicles and equipment working in and around the public at large,” Kutschinski says. “Our intent is to provide our professional drivers with vehicles and equipment that incorporate safety features that add to their toolbox of knowledge and usable technology in an effort to keep them and the public safe throughout each workday.”

Fixing an industrywide problem

The importance of investing in equipment that keeps drivers and the public safe has never been greater, as the waste collection industry continues to be among those with the highest rates of on-the-job injuries, illness and fatalities.

According to Abe Aon, business leader of fleet solutions in North America for WABCO parent company ZF Group, both the high-risk and high-cost nature of the waste industry make it an ideal fit for adopting driver safety technology.

“The waste and recycling industry is the fifth most dangerous occupation in the United States. According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, workers in solid waste collection were also in the top three job classifications to have the highest number of nonfatal injuries and illnesses, most caused by overexertion, being struck-by, striking against, or being compressed in equipment,” Aon says. “Data from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration shows that the average cost of a waste collection truck accident that results in an injury is approximately $97,000. It has also been found that the average cost of a heavy-duty vehicle accident that results in a fatality is $3,895,843.”

Kutschinski said that there are several core issues behind the high rate of incidences involving waste collection trucks.

These include distracted driving by both the public and waste operators; passenger cars performing risky maneuvers to get around waste vehicles due to the stop-and-go nature of collections; stationary obstructions in and around the tight locations collection vehicles must operate in; and low visibility of people and/or objects in drivers’ blind spots.

Kutschinski says that Waste Pro will have the first of these vehicles on the road in Q1 of 2021, and the plan is to incorporate the technology in all of its new Autocar vehicles starting with model year 2021-22 vehicles.

When asked how the company is hoping to measure the impact of the new safety systems in its trucks, Kutschinski said Waste Pro is going to be actively measuring reductions in accidents and injuries among its drivers.

While these safety features offer hope for cutting down on accidents, Buck adds the caveat that these ADAS systems are only tools and cannot replace old-fashioned vigilance during vehicle operation.

“It is important to remember that these systems do not replace the skill of the driver in avoiding an accident, but merely act as accident mitigation systems, which may reduce the severity of an accident and may, in certain circumstances, assist in preventing an accident,” Kutschinski says. “The driver is always responsible for the vehicle, and [he or she] should remain focused on the road and be ready to intervene at any time. The driver should never just rely on these ADAS systems to prevent an accident.”

The author is the editor of Waste Today magazine and can be reached at aredling@gie.net.