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 that will create the world's largest facility to convert landfill gas into clean vehicle fuel.

Waste Management (WMI: NYSE), 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 will be able 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 fuelling, 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 for Waste Management, said, "This project will allow us to tap into a valuable source of clean energy while greatly reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. 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 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. The company continues to pioneer a broad range of environmental services to help its 20 million customers reduce, reuse, recycle, and recover the 4.5 per capita pounds of solid waste produced in the U.S. each day.

About Waste Management

With nearly 50,000 employees, Waste Management is North America's leading provider of solid waste and recycling services and generates enough waste-based green energy to power about 1 million homes each year. The company operates the nation's largest fleet of heavy-duty natural gas collection trucks, and recently set goals to improve fleet fuel efficiency and reduce total fleet emissions by at least 15% and improve fuel efficiency by 15% by 2020. The company also plans to double its waste-based energy production and triple the volume of recyclables it processes by 2020. 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

Organization name: Waste Management, Inc
Contact Person: Wes Muir,  National Media
Phone: (713) 328-7053
Country: USA
Web: http://www.wm.com