North Andover, Massachusetts is home to the Wheelabrator North Andover plant and is one of the many towns and cities in the Merrimack Valley that send us their trash for conversion into electricity. Like any manufacturing facility or industrial operation, we make a product here at the plant - electricity. And just like other factories, we use a fuel to run the machines that make this product. In our case, the fuel is a plentiful but unlikely one - your trash.

At Wheelabrator North Andover, our plant operators have more than 200 combined years of waste-to-energy plant operating experience. That's experience that means clean energy for you.

In our plant, we generate electricity. Instead of using oil or coal or nuclear fuel to make electricity, we burn trash in large furnaces that are designed just for this purpose. The trash is placed on grates - a moving steel floor with air pumped in beneath - that pushes the fuel through the combustion process until only ash residue remains. Just five percent of the original trash volume, this ash is a result of highly complete combustion.

For a better understanding of combustion science, click here.

Burning the trash on the grates at very high temperatures creates hot gases that heat up water in the walls of the boilers. This water quickly becomes high-pressure steam, much more powerful and hotter than steam produced in a teakettle at home. We then allow this steam to expand rapidly through the precise revolving blades in a machine called a turbine. This turbine turns the shaft of a generator, producing electricity. The waste-to-energy process is truly remarkable. For more details and an illustration of this technology, visit the section About Waste to Energy. Better yet, call us at the plant and schedule a tour.

The Wheelabrator North Andover plant converts 800 million pounds of trash every year into enough electricity for almost 35,000 homes in the Merrimack Valley. By generating electricity out of trash, we help decrease the need for more landfills. We also decrease the burning of non-renewable fossil fuels like oil and coal in power plants.

Even after we generate electricity, we still find uses for what is left. From the leftover ash residue, we recycle more than 10 million pounds of metal each year. Since 1985, we have recycled enough metal at this plant to make more than 150,000 new automobiles!

Wheelabrator North Andover is committed to safety in the workplace, as well as in the community. As a member of the Waste Management Family, WNA is a participant in the "Mission to Zero" program. At Wheelabrator, safety is a core value, a cornerstone of operational excellence. It is a philosophy that is embedded in the way we work, the decisions we make, and the actions we take. As a group of companies with more than 50,000 employees and over 26,000 trucks on the road every day, we fully recognize the responsibility to hold ourselves to impeccable standards for the protection of our employees, our communities and our customers. Our goal is to attain world-class safety and, more important, to be among the companies in all of industry. Our plan of action is called Mission to Zero (M2Z). It means zero tolerance for unsafe actions, unsafe decisions, unsafe conditions, unsafe equipment and unsafe attitudes.

• The cornerstone of M2Z is a Safety Certification Training, which provides classroom and on the job site instruction in safety fundamentals for supervisors, drivers and helpers.
• M2Z seeks to enhance understanding, change behaviors and develop company leaders who can make a difference and train and lead others.
• M2Z does not seek to find fault or punish people. M2Z is about being hard on facts and easy on people.

Waste Management facilities monitor and measure safety performance on a continuing basis. These measures reflect the reduced frequency and severity of safety incidents, improved employee satisfaction and improved customer satisfaction.

Through the established Health and Safety processes and procedures, the goal of zero accidents and injuries is transformed into measurable results that have a positive impact on thousands of people.

In the Community

Wheelabrator North Andover does a lot more in the Merrimack Valley than just burn your trash and create electricity. Our employees are active members of the communities throughout the region, and we work hard as a company to support the people, organizations, and projects that make this area such a desirable place to live.

Among the many community initiatives that we have become involved with are:

• The construction of local school playgrounds
• Charitable contributions to community health and civic causes
• Perennial support for police, fire, and other public safety services
• Active support of environmental education programs
• Regular contributions to local athletic teams and leagues
• Support for school programs on violence and academics
• Underwriting for Boys' and Girls' Clubs
• Participation in raising funds for senior citizens and community shelters
• Active involvement and funding for the Merrimack Valley YMCA
• Trauma Intervention Program (TIP)

Throughout the year, we conduct dozens of tours of our plant for school children and other organized groups, such as the Cub and Boy Scouts. If your organization is interested in a tour, please call us. We also organize environmental seminars and projects for school groups. Call if your school or organization is interested in setting up a project today!