Casella Waste Systems, Inc. and its predecessor companies were founded in 1975 as Casella's Refuse Removal in Rutland, Vermont. On a chilly day in early April, Doug Casella began picking up garbage from a few customers in the Rutland and Killington region with a pickup truck he had bought with money saved from jobs he’d had as a kid in high school. Because the service was good, the small enterprise grew, and John Casella joined his younger brother a year later to help run the business.
The brothers, influenced not only by that unique spirit of New England frugality, could also see the future – and in 1977 built the company's first, and the state's first, recycling facility in Vermont. It was an inspired vision, one that anticipated the opportunities around resource renewal as well as viewing waste management as an integrated set of services – collection, recycling, transfer, and disposal.
The belief in this approach, and changes in public policy, fueled a period of rapid growth, as the company built an unparalleled waste and resource management infrastructure throughout the northeastern U.S.
In 1997, the company undertook an initial public offering of its stock. Trading of Casella stock began the day after one of the largest collapses in U.S. stock market history, and, despite general investor jitters about the market as a whole, the company's IPO became one of the most successful in industry history. The company is now publicly traded on the NASDAQ exchange under the symbol “CWST.”
Since 2000, the company has moved more aggressively to supplement traditional waste management services with its expertise in resource renewal and sustainability. It has consistently led the industry in offering services and infrastructure that help communities and customers sustain – economically as well as environmentally – the planet’s limited resources.
Today, with a clear strategy to serve our customers with integrated services, we continue to lead the solid waste industry with an innovative business strategy that seeks to create sustainable value beyond the traditional waste disposal model. We view waste as a resource for producing renewable energy and as a raw material for manufacturing new products.
And, just like our early days, we believe that if the service is good, the enterprise will thrive
