Letter from the CEO

Providing world-class environmental and sustainability services supports the Heritage Environmental Services (“Heritage”) mission of protecting human health and the environment and has always been the Heritage way. We are committed to building a more sustainable business and planet because we believe both are essential to enhanced, long-term growth that will benefit our stakeholders, including employees, the communities where we live and work, and our customers. Heritage has been in the sustainability business for over 50 years, and sustainability continues to drive our values-focused strategy to achieve wins for us, our customers, and ultimately the environment.

With sustainability serving as the foundation of our endeavors, we continue expansion of our environmental service offerings while seeking new ways to bring environmentally efficient solutions to the table. I am extremely proud of how we have successfully improved our waste management capabilities while at the same time substantially expanding our capabilities in the sustainability space. We have expanded Heritage’s footprint to include the refrigerants business and now are able to offer our global customers a complete solution for the best use of spent refrigerant gases while preventing ozone depleting greenhouse gases from escaping into the atmosphere. Our investment in Waelz Sustainable Products continues to support the recovery of valuable resources from the United States’ largest volume hazardous wastestream and achieved major milestones this year. Before the close of this reporting year, we acquired Frank’s Vacuum Truck Service, which will allow us to more effectively serve the Northeast U.S. These investments and other platform expansions continue our tradition of solving big problems for our customers and building a sustainable business for generations to come.

We anticipate our customer base will experience new and evolving waste challenges as well as expanding sustainability concerns. Heritage will continue to partner with the Heritage Research Group to develop sustainable solutions and expand our reach. Our companies will continue to provide best-in-class industrial waste management, industrial maintenance, and emergency response services across North America and carry on our tradition of sustainability leadership.

Letter from the President

This report recounts a year with many exciting changes for our company. We adjusted our fiscal year from a June 1 start to a calendar year. Last year’s report reflected June 1, 2021, through May 31, 2022. This report reflects  calendar year 2022, causing a period of data (i.e., January 1, 2022 to May 31, 2022) to be reported in last year and this year’s report, but all Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in this report represent 12 calendar months.

Heritage  Interactive Services is no longer a subsidiary of Heritage Environmental Services (Heritage); therefore, each entity will be completing its own sustainability report. Removing the carbon footprint of activities associated with Heritage Interactive Services is a qualifying event that requires a recalculation of our greenhouse gas emission baseline.

Moving forward, discussion of metric changes in our emissions will be compared to our revised baseline. On June 27, 2022, during maintenance activities in the course of a scheduled outage at our East Liverpool, Ohio incinerator, a non-waste-related fire ignited in our air pollution control equipment where contractors were working. Thankfully, no injuries were experienced and no harm to human health and the environment was sustained. The facility had not been operating for nearly two days and no waste was involved in or near the fire. What started as a planned weeklong outage became a multi-month shutdown. The length of the shutdown was impacted by supply chain shortages as well as strict permit  guidelines that encouraged no modifications or part substitutions as part of the rebuild. This incident occurred during a time when the industrial waste incineration industry for the United States was already experiencing a significant capacity issue. The incinerator resumed operations in late-December 2022, but not without considerable effort by our personnel and customers, and in consultation with Ohio EPA throughout the extended outage. The incinerator was inoperable for over five months, which resulted in an artificial dip in our greenhouse gas calculation.

During the reporting year, company strategic planning resulted in an updated aspiration: To be known as the most trusted leader in industrial environmental services in the U.S. Each new project under processing capacity, customer experience, or innovative growth has been evaluated and will be implemented taking into account sustainability impact.

Heritage initiated an internal Vision campaign to engage all employees. New material (video, posters, communications) was created to help employees understand their part in pursuing the company Vision: Heritage Environmental Services will feed its core hazardous waste facilities and expand its reach by applying research and development and engineered solutions to large customer waste challenges, building on a long history of innovation and incubation of new businesses from waste byproducts. As we enter 2023 and beyond, Heritage is positioned to be a leader in sustainability and will continue to help its customers successfully navigate their sustainability journeys.