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Message From Our CEO:

Thank you for taking time to learn more about Heritage, our sustainability efforts, and results
during our most recent fiscal year. For 50 years our organization has been pursuing our mission
of protecting human health and the environment through safe and compliant hazardous waste
treatment, storage, and disposal. We hold ourselves to strict levels of accountability and
our annual Sustainability Report is an important tool for tracking our progress in continuous
improvement.

This year, we demonstrated a more conscious effort to emphasize organizational sustainability
to ensure that we are investing in tools and programs to ensure business continuity in an ever
changing market environment. Ensuring that all of our employees understand our company
purpose – our core reason for being – through a more robust onboarding process is just the
foundation of how we’re investing more deeply in employee engagement, which leads to
higher retention rates, shared goals and a more sustainable business from a human capital
perspective. Of course, we continue to maintain a variety of sustainability goals with tracking
around environmental metrics, energy consumption, compliance reporting, employee diversity,
safety, and philanthropic community engagement.

Our Sustainability Program is a demonstration of our 50 year legacy of environmental
leadership. We welcome your interest and feedback on our Sustainability journey, and we
would be honored to assist you in yours.

Jeff Laborsky, CEO
Heritage Environmental Services, LLC

591,709 tons

waste diverted from landfills, through reuse or recycling, energy recovery, supplemental fuels and other alternative methods

12,855 tons

waste turned into energy

37% Reduction

in CO₂e per $ revenue from 2017 baseline

224 sites

transitioned to Zero Waste to Landfill

Download Full 2020 Sustainability Report

Download Single Page Printable Version

Executive SummaryPeoplePlanetProfitPatrons

Executive Summary

Heritage has determined the boundaries of our sustainability program to include all business operations owned and under our management control. As such, the information provided here is for the comprehensive organization of Heritage Environmental Services — including subsidiaries Heritage Interactive Services, Heritage Thermal Services, Heritage Thermal of Texas, Heritage Transport Services, Solid Oak, and Rineco Chemical Industries.

Heritage is involved in every aspect of the industrial waste management hierarchy: prevention, reuse, deconstruction, detoxification, treatment, and disposal. First and foremost, Heritage is a solutions company, offering customers quality management services, with an innovative spirit and always with a safety/compliance mind-set. Heritage owns and operates seven TSDFs (US EPA regulated hazardous waste treatment, storage, and disposal facilities) — including two hazardous waste incinerators, a hazardous waste landfill, an inorganic hazardous waste treatment complex, and an energy-from-waste fuels blending facility. This network of fixed facilities include the advanced treatment technologies necessary to provide the best available treatment technology (BDAT) for hazardous wastestreams.

Our inorganic waste treatment facilities specialize in heavy metal contaminants in wastewaters and solids, alike. Though capable of treatment and disposal of nearly any inorganic wastestream, the more common types we deal with are corrosives, cyanides, heavy metal bearing wastes, and materials needing stabilization or debris treatment.

Our acquisition of Rineco Chemical Industries in 2017 added a new layer of expertise and efficiency for our customers to move away from waste disposal toward beneficial reuse of byproduct materials. Our facility is the largest hazardous waste alternative fuel blending operation in the U.S. We convert liquid and solid waste-derived fuels into an environmentally friendly secondary fuel source to replace non-renewable traditional fossil fuels in kilns producing cement. Read more here: https://www.ckrc.org/.

Heritage provides hazardous waste incineration services for a variety of wastes including pharmaceuticals, chemical wastes, consumer commodities, DEA-controlled substances, mixed infectious hazardous wastes, and a variety of byproduct wastestreams. In 2020, with the addition of a second incinerator via Heritage Thermal of Texas, we have increased our ability to internally manage waste material that require incineration for assured destruction. The facility is currently being utilized as an internal asset and is not accepting materials directly from customers.

Through a fleet of truck and rail resources, Heritage has an extensive national network of  transportation in the continental United States. We can ensure complete transportation and logistics for full compliance. We recognize that movement of materials by rail is four times more carbon efficient than movement by truck and as such utilize rail between our facilities as much as possible and continue to encourage customers to also utilize rail for major projects when possible. Heritage has been recognized by our rail partner, CSX three times (2013, 2014 and 2019) with an Award for Chemical Safety Excellence. Heritage actively participates in the US EPA SmartWay Transportation program and has received an excellence award twice (2015 and 2016) for our results in reducing the carbon emissions of our fleet. We continue to replace older equipment and demand that new equipment has the latest features to minimize emissions. Read more here: https://www.heritage-enviro.com/heritage-marks-10-years-as-asmartway-transport-partner/.

Heritage provides on-site service programs for byproduct management and industrial maintenance services. Customized program services are contracted on a regional or enterprise wide basis by large multi-site manufacturing and refining organizations. These byproduct management and other programs focus on proper movement of waste within the customers site, proper management of waste/recycling when it is ready to leave the customer site, cost, risk, and sustainability reporting data. Many Heritage customers have achieved or are working toward the goal of Zero-Waste-to-Landfill. We operate several post-industrial recycling facilities where we specialize in finding solutions for hard-to-recycle materials and creating greater value for commonly recycled materials.

Other services performed at our customer’s facility or designated location include managing high hazard wastes, household hazardous waste collection programs, lab packing, industrial cleaning, and site remediation.

We provide support to customers in the areas of emergency response and disaster recovery. This commitment to addressing our customers concerns regarding potential risks from climate change are backed by lessons learned during our extensive remediation services provided for a major customer after the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the collection of materials for many communities after hurricanes, e.g. household hazardous waste, pharmaceutical waste, orphaned tanks, etc. This group expanded its service to our customers and communities during the 2020 COVID-19 Pandemic by creating a new service line to provide business continuity services (https://www.heritage-enviro.com/coronavirus/). Services include Emergency Response to locations with active outbreaks and Routine Disinfection Services in addition to our regular Hazardous, Industrial and Medical Waste Transportation and Disposal (which was identified as essential/critical). See also: https://www.heritage-enviro.com/transportation-ofalcohol-ethanol-or-ipa-based-hand-sanitizer-in-the-era-of-covid-19/. Heritage was presented with the Excellence Award “COVID-19 Response Champion” from the Indiana Manufacturers Association for our work to support the community in 2020.

Our water transfer operations support the shale oil and gas industry with water transfer and well site support. Heritage personnel design and construct above-groundwater transfer pipelines to support the water requirements for hydraulic fracturing and transferring of flow back or produced water. Depending upon the site location, fresh and reused water may be provided to the customer. An emphasize is placed on a cycle of water reuse to minimally impact fresh water sources in the community. By avoiding the movement of water over roads by truck transport, Heritage is reducing the environmental footprint of operations and improving community safety by keeping over the road traffic to a minimum. These efforts have expanded our ability to assist new and existing customers with safe and environmentally sound practices in the pursuit of new energy sources.

Heritage provides sustainability reporting on multiple platforms including the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and customized customer dashboards in our IS2 Interactive database. Heritage subscribes to a fiscal year that starts June 1. This report represents activities from June 1, 2019 through May 30, 2020.

People

2020 Sustainability report Metrics table people

Planet

waste management graphic source reduction recycling energy recovery treatment disposal

graph showing Heritage fleet performance

Profit

  • Goal: Identify and summarize annual energy reduction initiatives at fixed facilities, service centers and offices across the United States.
    • Sample Project: Implementation of efforts to allow for greater “work-from-home” activities for many office/support personnel in conjunction with coronavirus pandemic efforts within the FY2020 (March-May) equated to a reduction of 212 MT of CO2e, which equates to:

graphic showing carbon offset

  • Metric = 38 projects completed in 2020

Increase Return on Assets: Growth, retention and diversification of customer base that permits
re-investment of earnings into new technologies and new employment opportunities.

  • Heritage acquired a second incinerator located in Orange, Texas. This new fixed facility will be utilized as an internal only asset — not accepting customer waste directly. The location of this facility fills an important role in making Heritage competitive in the incineration marketplace where the cost of transportation impacts competitiveness. This strategic location will also result in an improvement to our transportation carbon footprint.
  • Heritage add several new services lines associated with response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: COVID-19 Emergency Response, Routine Disinfection Services, and Transportation Services for N-95 Mask decontamination for reuse.
  • Heritage also measures growth by its ability increase employment (and the ability maintain employment counts in tough economic or critical times like the COVID-19 Pandemic). Metric = 1% increase year-over-year.

Patrons

A Note on the Net Promoter Score

Net Promoter Score (NPS) varies between industries, but Bain & Co (source of the NPS system) considers a good score as something between +30 to +40. Anything between +50 and +80 is usually seen as outstanding. You can read more about net promoter scores here.

  • Heritage Invests in Future of Battery Recycling

  • Heritage Marks 10 Years as a SmartWay® Transport Partner

  • Earth Day Pollinator Project in Benton, AR

    Heritage employee in Benton, AR serves as beekeeper for pollinator project
  • Transportation of Alcohol (Ethanol or IPA) Based Hand Sanitizer in the Era of COVID-19

  • Donating Critical PPE & Supplies to Local Businesses

    Heritage employees donating hand sanitizer
  • Helping Our Communities in Times of Need

  • Int'l Women's Week Spotlight - Sheila Morris

  • Int'l Women's Week Spotlight - Angie Martin

  • Int'l Women's Week Spotlight - Winde Hamrick

Let’s achieve our sustainability goals together.

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