This Week in Waste: Top Stories Aug 17 – 20

By Siam Sukkhee Trading Co., Ltd — 2026-08-22 — Waste360 (recycling/scrap)

The recycling industry just had a reminder that nothing feels solid anymore. Copper prices were sliding. Meanwhile, the big waste operators were reporting earnings that looked better than they had any right to be.

You could see it in the market data.

Copper scrap was dropping—about $0.40 a pound by mid-August, enough to make you notice if you move volume. Not catastrophic. But the sort of shift that makes a trader lean back from their screen and recalibrate.

The bigger story sat in the earnings calls. The solid waste companies reporting Q2 results were seeing revenue bumps from higher fuel surcharges, stronger-than-expected recycled commodity prices, and RIN values that outpaced what management had forecast back in January. Waste Management in particular was guiding for a substantial reduction in sustainability capital expenditure for the year, which meant free cash flow conversion was shaping up at roughly 30 percent growth.

Actually, let me back up. The commodity piece is important.

You'd think a company planning less capex would be burning cash on something. Instead, the puzzle was this: where was the margin actually coming from. Steel production globally was ticking upward, the scrap metals sector was moving through its August rhythms, and yet the real win for operators was in the secondary markets—RINs, recycled material prices, the stuff that hedges against commodity slump.

This is where it gets interesting, or at least less straightforward.

Construction weakness was dragging down volumes for some operators. WCN and GFL Environmental were flagging macro uncertainty as a headwind. But the special waste segment—hazardous materials, industrial streams, everything that doesn't show up in residential kerbside—was humming. That segment was what traders call the green shoots. The part of the business that didn't sink when the rest of the cycle cooled.

Three quarters in, the pattern was becoming visible.

The companies that had diversified their revenue away from pure tonnage, away from commodity exposure, were the ones sleeping better. And for a trading outfit like ours, that matters when you're sizing your position in secondary metals or deciding which scrap flows to anchor your hedges against.

Tags: ESG metals mining industry