5.01.2008 - 04:44pm ET

(CSRwire) SAN FRANCISCO, CA – May 1, 2008 - Collecting garbage and recyclables in California is about to get a lot cleaner, thanks to a joint venture between Linde North America and Waste Management (WMI: NYSE) that will create the world's largest facility to convert landfill gas into clean vehicle fuel.

Waste Management, North America's largest waste management company, and Linde North America - part of The Linde Group, a leading global gases and engineering company, today announced a joint venture to build a liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility, located at the Altamont Landfill near Livermore, California to convert landfill gas into a clean vehicle fuel. The project offers a unique opportunity to "close the loop" by fueling hundreds of collection trucks with clean fuel produced from garbage.

The companies will partner to install systems to purify and liquefy the landfill gas Waste Management collects from the natural decomposition of organic waste in the landfill. When the facility begins operating in 2009 it is expected to produce up to 13,000 gallons a day of LNG.

Pat Murphy, president of Linde North America, said, "Linde and Waste Management are joining together to clean up our environment by capturing and reusing landfill gas for vehicle fueling, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30,000 tons per year. Linde is using its expertise in designing and developing LNG plants around the world to create a clean and sustainable energy solution for the residents of California."

Duane Woods, senior vice president, Western group of Waste Management, said, "This project has the potential to allow us to tap into a valuable source of clean energy while greatly reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. This will be the largest plant of its kind and we hope to break new ground by producing commercial quantities. Natural gas is already the cleanest burning fuel available for our collection trucks, and the opportunity to use recovered landfill gas offers enormous environmental benefits to the communities we serve."

The $15.5 million Waste Management-Linde project will receive grant assistance from the California Integrated Waste Management Board, the California Air Resources Board, and the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Linda Adams, secretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency, calls the project a "very significant step towards helping meet Governor Schwarzenegger's new, low-carbon fuel standard. The LNG produced from the Altamont landfill gas will be a virtually zero-carbon transportation fuel. This is a key milestone in helping us develop the facilities needed to produce more than 200 million gallons of clean transportation fuel each year from the garbage in California's landfills."

Linde is focused on finding ways to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and our emission of greenhouse gases by developing alternative energy solutions. These include alternative energy technologies using hydrogen, biogas, LNG and other sustainable replacements for gasoline, diesel and other oil products. Around the world, Linde provides technical solutions for the processing, transportation and storage of LNG and biogas, ranging from one of the world’s largest LNG plants in Hammerfest, Norway, to biogas fuelling stations for drivers in Sweden.

Waste Management is a founding member of the Chicago Climate Exchange and the first solid waste company to join the California Climate Action Registry. In 2003, the company committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions through increased recycling, the use of alternative transportation fuels, and the beneficial use of landfill gas. This project is also part of the company’s environmental sustainability initiative to double its waste-based energy production from the equivalent of 1 million to 2 million homes each year by 2020 as well as directing capital spending of up to $500 million per annum over a 10-year period to increase the fuel efficiency of its fleet by 15 percent and reduce fleet emissions by 15 percent by 2020 as well as investments in new technologies to enhance our business.


About Waste Management

Waste Management, Inc., based in Houston, Texas, is the leading provider of comprehensive waste management services in North America. Through its subsidiaries, the Company provides collection, transfer, recycling and resource recovery, and disposal services. It is also a leading developer, operator and owner of waste-to-energy and landfill gas-to-energy facilities in the United States. The Company’s customers include residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal customers throughout North America. For more information see www.thinkgreen.com.

About Linde

The Linde Group is a world leading gases and engineering company with more than 50,000 employees working in around 100 countries worldwide. In the 2007 financial year it achieved sales of EUR 12.3 billion (USD$18.7 billion). The strategy of The Linde Group is geared towards earnings-based and sustainable growth and focuses on the expansion of its international business with forward-looking products and services.
Linde acts responsibly towards its shareholders, business partners, employees, society and the environment – in every one of its business areas, regions and locations across the globe. Linde is committed to technologies and products that unite the goals of customer value and sustainable development. For more information, see The Linde Group web site at www.linde.com.

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