With much less fanfare, however, Gates has put more than double that amount into a very dirty, old-school industry. At the time of the Paris summit, he was already the dominant shareholder of America\u2019s No. 2 landfill operator, Republic Services. He has since increased his stake to 38% of the company, a position worth $29 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\nBill Gates\u2019 Stake in Republic Services, a Landfill Operator, Now Exceeds a Fifth of His Net Worth\n<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNote: “Other” includes stakes in other publicly traded companies and accumulated dividends and investment returns. Sources: Forbes\u2019 The World’s Billionaires, Bloomberg\u2019s Billionaires Index, SEC filings, StockAnalysis.com<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tChris Alcantara\/ProPublica<\/p>\n
While fossil fuels get most of the attention, scientists increasingly see landfills as a crucial climate issue. They\u2019re responsible for as much as a fifth of the country\u2019s emissions of methane<\/a>, a highly potent greenhouse gas, studies show. Republic alone generates as much climate pollution as 3 million gasoline-burning cars<\/a> each year, according to its own reports.<\/p>\n One might imagine that a landfill operator with Gates as its largest shareholder \u2014 and with three people closely linked to Gates on its board \u2014 would lead the way in tackling those emissions. Even after seemingly softening his stance on global warming in a controversial blog post<\/a> last year, Gates remains one of the world\u2019s most prominent voices on the issue. As he did in his bestselling 2021 book \u201cHow to Avoid a Climate Disaster,\u201d he continues to advocate for cutting emissions<\/a>, and he has called on his fellow business leaders to do their part.\u00a0<\/p>\n Gates, though, has failed to make Republic live up to his own climate principles, a ProPublica investigation has found. Federal inspectors have repeatedly found methane escaping from Republic landfills at levels above federal limits. The company has refrained from adopting the ambitious emissions-reduction goal embraced by its main competitor. Republic has even lobbied against policies that could make the wider industry cleaner, including by keeping organic waste out of landfills<\/a> in the first place.<\/p>\n \u201cIt seems very likely that Bill Gates has the power to influence Republic\u2019s behavior to make it more climate-friendly, even if that costs the company profits,\u201d said Ann Lipton, a legal scholar who studies corporate governance at the University of Colorado, Boulder.\u00a0<\/p>\n As for whether he should, in her words, \u201cput his money where his mouth is,\u201d Lipton said, \u201cyou can leave it to the reader to make the moral judgment.\u201d<\/p>\n Gates\u2019 Climate Awakening<\/p>\n Gates didn\u2019t respond to repeated requests to discuss his landfill investments, and ProPublica couldn\u2019t find any public comments he\u2019s made about them. But the bet has proven wildly lucrative. Since November 1999, when he emerged as the owner of 5% of Republic\u2019s shares \u2014 \u201cIt\u2019s \u2018Garbage In\u2019 for Gates<\/a>,\u201d the New York Post headline read \u2014 the company\u2019s stock price has soared thirtyfold. And Gates has personally received $2.6 billion in dividends, a ProPublica analysis of securities filings shows.<\/p>\n In those early days, Gates hadn\u2019t yet awakened to the threat of global warming. It was a different time. Microsoft Windows ran on more than 80% of personal computers. Gates was the world\u2019s richest person, and his bespectacled face graced the cover of Time<\/a> magazine twice that year<\/a>. He was simultaneously criticized for what a federal judge determined to be Microsoft\u2019s monopolistic practices<\/a> and admired for establishing what was soon to become the world\u2019s largest charitable foundation.\u00a0<\/p>\n A rare clue to why Gates made his foray into landfills can be found in an interview he gave to Fortune<\/a> that year. To fund his plan to give away virtually his entire fortune, he said he\u2019d given his personal money manager, Michael Larson, a simple remit: Sell Microsoft shares, buy safe, boring assets.\u00a0<\/p>\n Republic\u2019s then-chairman, billionaire Wayne Huizenga<\/a>, had flown Larson by helicopter to his private golf course in Florida, according to the article. It\u2019s unclear if Huizenga pitched Republic there, but it fit the remit. America would always produce trash, ensuring a steady stream of revenue. After that initial investment, Larson progressively increased Gates\u2019 stake in Republic over the years that followed. Larson would also acquire a small chunk of Republic\u2019s main competitor, Waste Management \u2014 which Huizenga also once led \u2014 on behalf of the Gates Foundation.<\/p>\n It was only in 2006, when he asked two climate scientists to educate him, that Gates started to grasp the potentially \u201ccatastrophic\u201d effects of greenhouse gases<\/a>, he later wrote. But he also saw that the poorest people in the world needed more energy to improve their lot. The solution, he concluded, was something climate activists often underplay: innovation that could make clean energy cheap enough<\/a> to naturally displace fossil fuels. That was the idea behind Breakthrough Energy, the initiative he launched in Paris in 2015.<\/p>\n Around the same time, methane began to emerge as a focus of climate action. The gas can trap 80 times more heat than carbon dioxide in the near term, and it\u2019s responsible for one-third of the global warming<\/a> we experience today, according to the United Nations Environment Programme. But it also breaks down much more quickly, turning into CO2 and water vapor in about a decade \u2014 which means that cutting methane emissions now would reduce that warming within our lifetimes. This is especially urgent, scientists say, as the climate approaches tipping points<\/a> that could doom rainforests, coral reefs and ice sheets.<\/p>\n In speeches and interviews, Gates has sometimes warned about methane, but usually from agricultural sources (\u201ccow farts<\/a>,\u201d in his words). He has rarely mentioned landfills, even after Larson \u2014 who still runs Gates\u2019 investment office, Cascade Asset Management \u2014 joined Republic\u2019s board in 2009. Gates\u2019 stake in the company, though, was a relatively small portion of his own net worth until fairly recently. And as Larson put it to Fortune, \u201cI\u2019ll call Bill about something I\u2019m buying if he needs to know, but Bill might not have any idea what Cascade owns.\u201d (Gates\u2019 Republic holdings are publicly disclosed in securities filings.)<\/p>\n Elsewhere in Gatesworld, people started to home in on the climate threat posed by landfills. The root of the issue is that landfills store buried trash \u2014 and when organic waste decomposes underground, in the absence of oxygen, it generates methane. The Gates Foundation has funded research and advocacy<\/a> aimed at solving that problem, and Breakthrough has backed at least two early-stage companies developing their own solutions. One, Windfall Bio, uses microbes to digest methane into fertilizer. Its product was actually tested<\/a> last year at a Republic landfill in California, where the pink liquid<\/a> was sprinkled on the soil covering the top layer of trash.\u00a0<\/p>\n Windfall said the test worked, substantially reducing emissions, but the startup reportedly ceased operations<\/a> after a Department of Energy grant was canceled<\/a>. (Windfall didn\u2019t respond to emailed requests for comment.)\u00a0<\/p>\n On the surface, Republic has pursued a path consistent with Gates\u2019 mission. In 2019, it became the first U.S. landfill operator to sign up for the Science Based Targets Initiative, promising to cut its emissions<\/a> by 35% by 2030. Not that this was charity. Republic\u2019s \u201cclimate leadership\u201d became part of its pitch for garbage-collection contracts<\/a> in progressive cities and counties. The company also won placements on stock indexes for businesses that meet certain environmental, social and governance criteria<\/a>, attracting sustainability-minded investors.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, a fundamental tension remained \u2014 one at the heart of Gates\u2019 vision. As Republic\u2019s then-CEO Donald Slager put it on a 2017 call with investors, \u201cYou can\u2019t have sustainability without profitability.\u201d<\/p>\n A Not-So-Model Landfill<\/p>\n Each day, Americans throw away melon rinds, salmon skins and half-eaten drumsticks, paper towels, cheese that was too funky and eggs a day past their sell-by date. They discard greasy pizza boxes with crusts still rattling around inside and unthinkable amounts of leftover Chinese takeout. Not to mention the occasional dead pet.<\/p>\n Most of that trash \u2014 240 million tons a year, enough to bury Manhattan under 100 feet of refuse \u2014 is hauled to one of the country\u2019s 1,400 active landfills, where hulking vehicles with spiked wheels crush it into thin layers. At the end of each day, bulldozers typically spread soil on top, and for almost everyone who produced that trash, it will forever remain out of sight and out of mind.<\/p>\n People who live near landfills<\/a>, though, describe smelling rotten cabbage, rotten eggs and rotten fish, as well as ammonia and skunk. Or as a neighbor to one Republic landfill put it: \u201cI started smelling this stench like burning diapers. \u2026 It was foul.\u201d Some describe burning throats, burning eyes, headaches and nausea<\/a>. And while methane itself has no scent, those odors indicate that the gas is being released<\/a>, studies show.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, modern landfills are an undeniable improvement over what came before. Open dumping and burning<\/a> remained widespread until the 1970s. It was only in the \u201990s that federal regulators started requiring operators to collect leachate (garbage juice, which can contaminate groundwater) and, at larger facilities, landfill gas (which is typically about half methane and half carbon dioxide but can also contain carcinogens like benzene).<\/p>\n Industry experts often compare landfills to living, breathing creatures. Underground trash inevitably shifts and settles, making it difficult to keep that gas from escaping<\/a>. Managing such a beast is costly, which helps to explain why smaller operations have increasingly given way to corporations like Republic, which can turn a profit through economies of scale.<\/p>\n Republic declined to make executives available for interviews or to allow ProPublica to visit a landfill. But in May 2022 \u2014 around the same time Gates was lobbying for the passage of President Joe Biden\u2019s historic climate bill<\/a> \u2014 the company invited the Houston Chronicle to its local McCarty Road Landfill. Opened a half century earlier, the facility had passed through two corporate owners before being swallowed up by Republic, and now it was the site of a very Gatesian kind of project.<\/p>\n On the day of the visit, gulls circled hungrily as workers in neon vests gave a tour of the gas-collection system<\/a>. Like at most other large landfills in the country, wells had been drilled deep into the trash below \u2014 five hundred of them in total. The top of each well sprouted from the grassy slopes in the form of a stubby black pipe fitted with a valve for adjusting the flow of underground gas. The workers also showed off large, bright blue, snail-shaped \u201cblowers\u201d \u2014 machines that suck that gas into a network of pipelines, then push it to the clanking, humming on-site plant that turns it into a salable product.<\/p>\n Most landfills that are required to collect gas simply burn it off<\/a>. But they can also process it into \u201crenewable natural gas,\u201d which is functionally equivalent to the version pumped by oil companies. In part because this reuses the carbon from decomposing waste, it\u2019s generally considered more climate-friendly<\/a>. It also turns an environmental liability into a source of revenue \u2014 exactly the kind of win-win that Gates has long championed.\u00a0<\/p>\n Yet the technology is no guarantee that the climate is being protected. In fact, it may be just the opposite.<\/p>\n In September 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency issued an \u201cenforcement alert\u201d saying that landfills across the country were \u201cviolating monitoring and maintenance requirements<\/a>.\u201d While the EPA didn\u2019t name the operators, ProPublica obtained the corresponding spreadsheet through a public records request, and a fifth of the facilities targeted belong to Republic.<\/p>\n McCarty, far from being a model landfill, was among the worst offenders. It would soon earn Republic a formal \u201cfinding of violation<\/a>\u201d for allegedly failing to detect \u201cexceedances\u201d \u2014 methane escaping at levels above federal limits \u2014 for years on end. The EPA also noted repeated failures to address flooded wells, gullies formed by erosion and trash peeking through the surface of the landfill. Despite Republic\u2019s economic incentive to capture methane, EPA inspectors found evidence of \u201cpoor maintenance\u201d and \u201ccareless operation\u201d of the gas-collection system as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n And McCarty is hardly an outlier. Recent studies suggest that landfills with renewable natural gas facilities can actually emit more methane<\/a> than those that only burn off the gas or use it to generate electricity. One possible explanation is that methane concentrations can vary across different parts of a landfill. According to researchers at Carbon Mapper, a NASA partner that measures emissions from various industries, some operators may prioritize collecting gas with higher methane content<\/a>, which is cheaper to process \u2014 allowing more of the remaining methane to leak out.<\/p>\n Republic spokesperson Rob Litt declined to comment on whether that happened at McCarty, but said in a statement, \u201cWe employ hundreds of environmental managers and engineers. \u2026 If issues are identified, we work to resolve them.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cProtecting the environment is part of Republic Services\u2019 business,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n The issues aren\u2019t exclusive to landfills with natural gas facilities. Since 2020, EPA inspectors have used handheld methane detectors to sweep at least 39 of Republic\u2019s roughly 200 landfills, according to inspection reports obtained by ProPublica. Including the issues at McCarty, they documented more than 1,400 problem spots \u2014 ranging from animal burrows to choked-off wells \u2014 spewing excessive amounts of methane.<\/p>\n In some cases, methane could be seen bubbling up through dark, fetid leachate pools. In others, so much methane was being released \u2014 with concentrations between 100 and 300 times the federal limit \u2014 that it was an explosion hazard.<\/p>\n Methane Bubbles at a Republic Services Landfill<\/p>\n Methane bubbles up through a pool of liquid drained from the trash at Republic\u2019s Apex Regional Landfill in Nevada, documented by EPA inspectors in 2024. Environmental Protection Agency<\/p>\n What the Satellites Saw<\/p>\n Around the time of the Houston Chronicle visit, Republic\u2019s CEO, a former McKinsey consultant named Jon Vander Ark, was promoting a new slogan: \u201cSustainability in action.\u201d Meanwhile, though, Republic was quietly shying away from true climate leadership.<\/p>\n In 2021, two years after Republic signed on to the Science Based Targets Initiative, the SBTI made its minimum climate goal<\/a> much more ambitious. Waste Management (where the Gates Foundation owns a small minority of the shares) would soon adopt it.<\/p>\n This was just months after Gates published \u201cHow to Avoid a Climate Disaster,\u201d in which he exhorted private companies \u201cto embrace the harder steps\u201d toward solving global warming. Republic staff calculated that the new SBTI target could require more than $1 billion in additional spending on gas wells and other improvements, according to a former employee. Though that is less than half of what Republic has spent on dividends for Gates alone, it would leave less money for the company to redistribute to him and other shareholders. Republic has also spent more than $8 billion buying its own stock<\/a> in the open market, ProPublica\u2019s analysis shows, likely boosting the value of shares held by investors.<\/p>\n The matter was finally presented to the board around the second half of 2024, this person said. By then the board included Larson, Gates\u2019 longtime investment manager \u2014 whose \u201cinsight into sustainability issues<\/a>\u201d is cited in company filings \u2014 and three other people with business ties to Gates (one has since left). While that is only four board members among a total of 13, Gates\u2019 dominant shareholding means that, \u201cas a practical matter, on any matter that gets voted on, he will almost certainly control the outcome,\u201d said Lipton, the corporate-governance expert.<\/p>\n Republic never made the leap, and now it walks an awkward line. It continues to tout its affiliation with the SBTI while saying, in a note buried deep in one of its many sustainability reports, that the more ambitious target is \u201cnot an immediate strategic priority<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Per SBTI rules, Republic has until the end of this year to submit an updated target<\/a>. But when ProPublica asked if it would, the spokesperson said only, \u201cWe are reviewing our goals.\u201d He declined to comment on the estimated cost or the board discussions.<\/p>\n There is, though, an even larger issue with Republic\u2019s climate claims.<\/p>\n In line with its existing SBTI goal, Republic says it has already cut its landfill emissions<\/a> by 20% since 2017. But that figure isn\u2019t based on actual measurements of methane escaping from its facilities. According to the method cited in its sustainability reports, Republic instead typically measures the methane collected by its wells. Then it extrapolates how much it\u2019s failing to collect \u2014 and how much is being emitted \u2014 based on the characteristics of each facility.\u00a0<\/p>\n This method is based on an industry study that, as the EPA has noted<\/a>, excluded data from gas-collection systems that were \u201cnot working well<\/a>.\u201d The EPA\u2019s own reporting rules allow the same basic approach, which can cause companies collecting less gas due to a \u201cmalfunction or inefficiency\u201d to \u201cerroneously report decreasing emissions<\/a>,\u201d according to a 2025 study using satellite data by researchers at Harvard, NASA and Carbon Mapper. The researchers specifically examined two Republic landfills, and at one of them, the company reported declining emissions to the EPA even though satellite measurements showed they had risen over a four-year period.<\/p>\n The reporting gaps can be enormous. A study led by Hannah Nesser, now at Georgetown, found Republic facilities to be the No. 1 and No. 2 emitters<\/a> among the roughly 70 large U.S. landfills the researchers observed over the course of 2019. The first, the National Serv-All Landfill in Indiana, was found to be releasing an astounding 13 times as much methane as what the company reported to the EPA. And that pattern repeated to varying degrees across three-quarters of the Republic landfills in the study. (McCarty wasn\u2019t in the study, but according to measurements by Carbon Mapper<\/a>, it emits more than twice what the company has reported.)\u00a0<\/p>\n In response to questions about these studies, the Republic spokesperson said, \u201cWe stand by the sustainability results we\u2019ve achieved.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He also pointed to a letter from the National Waste and Recycling Association, a major trade group, questioning the accuracy<\/a> of satellite measurements. It is a tactic from the playbook of another major climate polluter, the oil and gas industry, said Katherine Blauvelt of Full Circle Future, which advocates for cleaning up landfills.<\/p>\n \u201cSatellites, peer-reviewed research studies and EPA inspectors on the ground all keep finding the same thing: unchecked and underreported methane emissions,\u201d she said. \u201cThere\u2019s a fire alarm going off and instead of getting out the extinguisher, the waste industry is blaming the smoke detector.\u201d<\/p>\n Quietly Fighting Climate Policies<\/p>\n Last year, Gates published a blog post criticizing the \u201cdoomsday view\u201d of global warming<\/a> \u2014 a striking shift for someone who\u2019d once warned of the failing ecosystems, mass migration and soaring mortality<\/a> that could result from hotter temperatures. That led climate skeptics, including President Donald Trump, to say that Gates had admitted<\/a> he was wrong. But Gates called that a \u201cgigantic misreading.\u201d While he believed more lives could be saved by improving global health, where he\u2019d decided to shift his resources, he remained a \u201cclimate activist<\/a>,\u201d he told one audience.<\/p>\n Gates has tried to lead by example. In 2019, he sold his shares in oil and gas companies because, he later wrote, \u201cI don\u2019t want to profit<\/a> if their stock prices go up because we don\u2019t develop zero-carbon alternatives.\u201d He kept flying by private jet, but he \u201coffset\u201d those emissions by buying credits from a company that removes carbon from the air. He has also called on other business leaders to \u201cmake sure that they\u2019re not holding back<\/a>\u201d climate policies, even if those policies could cut into profits.<\/p>\n Republic has actively worked against such policies \u2014 and yet Gates, according to securities filings, has never sold a share.<\/p>\n In the final year of the Biden administration, the EPA announced a plan to update its landfill gas rules, which have changed little since the \u201990s. Among other potential changes, the agency asked for comments<\/a> on the newer technologies, such as satellites and drones, that research has found to be effective in monitoring and controlling methane pollution<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Some landfill operators were already experimenting with these innovations. But they wanted almost all of it to remain voluntary<\/a>, according to a joint statement from the National Waste and Recycling Association and the Solid Waste Association of North America, both of which have Republic executives on their boards.<\/p>\n \u201cWe do not believe that any of these technologies are sufficiently developed,\u201d the industry groups said, adding that the various innovations were \u201cnot cost-effective,\u201d \u201creliable\u201d or \u201ctransparent.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The Republic spokesperson declined to comment on whether that lobbying goes against its climate commitments.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the issue comes down to the profit of the corporate landfill operators and their resistance to do things that will eat into that,\u201d said Darin Schroeder of the Clean Air Task Force, a climate advocacy group.<\/p>\n Gates\u2019 press representatives didn\u2019t respond to questions about whether he\u2019s aware of the issues at Republic \u2014 or whether he has independently investigated the source of a fifth of his fortune<\/a>. But ProPublica interviewed multiple former employees at Breakthrough Energy, Gates\u2019 clean-tech investment arm, who all spoke on condition of anonymity.\u00a0 They each said they hadn\u2019t even heard about his landfill holdings.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI agree there\u2019s a bit of a conundrum there,\u201d said one high-ranking staffer who was laid off last year. But this person added, \u201cBased on my time with him, I think he\u2019s very serious about climate change. This isn\u2019t a vanity thing for him.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMy theory is that he probably doesn\u2019t have much involvement in those investments,\u201d said another laid-off staffer.<\/p>\n Gates\u2019 investment managers, at least, can\u2019t claim total ignorance. Larson and Thomas Handley, a Cascade senior adviser, both participate actively in Republic\u2019s board discussions, according to a fellow director who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of those private discussions. The board also receives regular management briefings, including \u201chigh level\u201d reports on the company\u2019s lobbying and litigation over \u201cpractices we could do better<\/a>,\u201d this director said. (Larson didn\u2019t return phone messages left by ProPublica at his office, and Cascade didn\u2019t respond to a question about his and Handley\u2019s involvement in Republic.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear if Gates himself ever learned of those reports. But he appears to have an even larger blind spot on the issue. The waste industry doesn\u2019t fit neatly into his view of climate change as a problem to be solved mainly through technological breakthroughs. Innovations can help, but the root of the problem is the inescapable fact that, when organic waste decomposes in the absence of oxygen, methane is produced.\u00a0<\/p>\n Properly managing the waste we\u2019ve already buried is only the first step, said Riley Duren, the former NASA engineer who founded Carbon Mapper. \u201cIn parallel,\u201d he said, \u201creduce food waste. Full stop. Then divert organic waste away from landfills to prevent future emissions.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n This isn\u2019t a utopian fantasy. Germany started phasing out the landfilling<\/a> of biodegradable waste in 1993, and its landfill methane emissions have plunged by more than 90%. (That compares to a decline of 40% in the U.S. over roughly the same period.) Within the U.S., California now requires food scraps and yard trimmings to be collected for composting or other uses, and state regulators found that the economic, climate and health benefits would ultimately outweigh the costs<\/a>.<\/p>\n In its glossy sustainability reports, Republic says that \u201corganics recycling plays an important role in our operations.\u201d And in California, with its mandatory collection rules, the company processed close to a million tons of organic waste last year, much of that at composting facilities.<\/p>\n![\"Three](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/GettyImages-499274812.jpg\")
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, right, then-U.S. President Barack Obama, left, and then-French President Fran\u00e7ois Hollande applaud a speech during the United Nations conference on climate change in Paris in 2015. Jim Watson\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"Clouds](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/20260929-Felix-Gates-Landfills-017.jpg\")
Dust is kicked up by trucks and bulldozers at Republic Service\u2019s McCarty Road Landfill in Houston. Mark Felix for ProPublica<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/GettyImages-2191080435.jpg\")
A Republic worker stands next to a gas well at the company\u2019s McCarty Road Landfill in Houston in 2022. Houston Chronicle\/Hearst Newspapers<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/20260929-Felix-Gates-Landfills-003-1.jpg\")
The entrance to Republic\u2019s McCarty Road Landfill in Houston Mark Felix for ProPublica<\/p>\n![\"Several](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/20260929-Felix-Gates-Landfills-002.jpg\")
Garbage trucks pull in and out of the McCarty landfill. Mark Felix for ProPublica<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/h_16457930.jpg\")
Bill Gates attends the groundbreaking for TerraPower\u2019s nuclear power plant near Kemmerer, Wyoming, in 2024. Benjamin Rasmussen\/The New York Times\/Redux<\/p>\n![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/20261029-Felix-Gates-Landfills-009.jpg\")
A steady stream of garbage trucks flows through Republic\u2019s McCarty Road Landfill in Houston on a recent weekday.\u00a0 Mark Felix for ProPublica. Aerial support by LightHawk.<\/p>\n