22 KIPLINGER’S PERSONAL FINANCE^ 04/2020
a fatberg—caused the spill-
age of 1.2 million gallons
of sewage into Jones Falls,
which empties into Balti-
more Harbor. That same
year in London, a 140-ton
fatberg blocked city sewers.
DARLING INGREDIENTS
(SYMBOL DAR, $27), which
began its life as a Texas
rendering company in the
19th century, collects food
waste and various animal
by-products and transforms
it all into more useful things
for customers in the food,
animal feed and fuel indus-
tries, among others.
For example, Darling’s
Bakery Feeds division takes
leftover bakery products—
bread, dough, pasta, crack-
ers, cereal, bagels, sweet
goods and snack chips—and
turns it into high-energy
animal feed. Its Diamond
Green Diesel unit takes
animal fat, used cooking
oil and distiller’s oils and
turns it into diesel fuel.
That renewable-diesel
business is on track to pro-
duce 1.1 billion gallons by
2024, up from 275 million
currently, according to ana-
lysts at investment firm
Baird, who named Darling
stock a “top pick” for 2020.
In December, President
Trump signed into law an
extension of the biodiesel
tax credit through 2022
(retroactive to 2018), and
that provided the company
with a big slug of the capital
needed for future expan-S
ustainable investing
hasn’t just arrived; it’s
fast becoming a bed-
rock principle. We looked for
companies that are taking
up the sustainability chal-
lenge and found some that
are addressing pressing
environmental problems—
too much trash, scarce re-
sources and increasingly
intractable weather woes.
Some of these firms have
had sustainability at the core
of their business long before
it was a buzzword. Our six
picks range from tiny, more-
speculative firms whose
success depends on their
environmentally focused
operations, to large, depend-
able firms that are giving at
least part of their business
a greener tint.TACKLING WASTE
The world’s 7.5 billion people
are contributing to an enor-
mously untidy planet—not
due just to trash and plas-
tic but food waste, too.
The world wastes about
one-third of the food it
produces—roughly 130 bil-
lion tons a year. That’s about
200 to 250 pounds per per-
son, according to the Food
and Agriculture Organiza-
tion of the United Nations.
We’d like to think that
those billions of pounds of
food waste compost nicely
back into the soil, but that’s
not always so. In 2017, a
mass of congealed fat and
waste in Baltimore—dubbedINVESTING
6 Green Stocks
sion. In the meantime,
trends for the company’s
other core businesses re-
main favorable, according
to Baird analysts, who be-
lieve the stock can trade
at $35 a share over the next
12 months, a nearly 30% in-
crease from its recent close.
WASTE MANAGEMENT (WM,
$122), another Texas com-
pany, is a less speculative
play on the world’s growing
mountain of trash. With
a market capitalization of
$52 billion, the firm is the
largest trash collector (and
disposer) in North America.
It owns 252 solid waste land-
fills, 132 recycling facilities
and 314 transfer stations,
which consolidate, com-
pact and transport waste
to landfills.
Waste Management’s
Renewable Energy division
uses gas from decomposing
waste to generate electric-
ity, which it then sells to
utilities. The company has
about 7,600 trucks powered
by natural gas, and one-
third of those run on natu-
ral gas reclaimed from the
company’s landfills.
Waste Management
has an impressive dividend
history, increasing its pay-
out every year for the past
16 years. The most recent
hike pushed the annual div-
idend from $2.05 to $2.18,
giving the stock a yield of
1.8%. Furthermore, the com-
pany has a strong record
of beating Wall Street’sThese companies prosper by addressing environmental challenges.