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When he was 23, he decided to immigrate to America to find a better life. He chose Chicago. His mother
had a cousin that lived there.
In the 1860s in America, Abraham Lincoln was elected as the President. South Carolina was the first
state to secede or leave from the union. Then, later the Civil War began. By 1865, Lincoln had been
assassinated. By the 1870s, were women gaining the right to vote. The country was under
reconstruction, which meant states that had left the union during the Civil War were coming back.
When Harm came to America, it was in a
period called the Gilded Age. During this
time the nation grew very fast. Factories
created huge amounts of iron and steel,
and the trees in forests were cut for
lumber. The railroad companies stretched
their lines farther and farther so that
goods could reach many more people.
Inventors created a lot of products. As a
result, cities became crowded and dirty.
A year later, he bought a horse and wagon to do just that! He called himself a raker, which means
someone who rakes up the trash. He raked up garbage for $1.25 a load. Harm Huizenga is known as
the grandfather of waste management.
Harmss Beliefs
Harm wanted to improve the lives of the working class
people in America. He imagined streets that were clean
enough for children to play in them without getting sick.
His trash hauling raker buinsess provided safety from
the unhealthy environment of the city streets.
Garbage rakers.
Credit: Google Images
Naturally, he had the problem of trying to get good strong men and boys to want to do the job, while
there was other work to be found. He posted flyers and want ads on the sides of buildings and offered
good pay. He developed loading devices and tipping systems. This enabled large items to be put into the
wagon and also to be taken out! The hard work of raking trash was a bit easier.
Oil, chemical, and steel companies dumped their waste in waterways. The water supply in Lake Michigan
was in danger. They were not protected from the harmful wastes that were being put into it.
Chicago kept on growing. They kept on creating even more waste. In the 1950s they turned to
incineration. Up until the 1980s, Chicago burned most of its garbage. But scientists and citizens became
concerned so the city closed it down.
Now that people are aware of the dangers of toxic or dangerous chemicals from trash, they have sought
out laws to protect their city, land, and water. Old landfills are being cleaned up. Many landfills now are
small mountains, stretching hundreds of feet into the air. Pipes protrude or come out of the earth. From
them escape methane, a gas. The energy from the waste has to transfer somehow. Other landfills are
shut down, and converted into parks or golf courses.
Palmisano has long paths that wind through a fishing pond,
trails and a hill along a quarry wall. The scenery is open to
beautiful views of a pond and wetlands atop a large mound.
You can also see spectacular Chicago city views. It is a
beautiful place that was once a quarry filled to the top with
trash.
Cominsky Park, the ballpark in Chicago was once a landfill. It
was the home of the Chicago Whitesox baseball team. It
Palmisano Park, Chicago
hosted four World Series and 6,000 Major League games. It
was mostly made up of Astro turf and ballpark dirt. There
Credit: Google Images
were stands in which people
sit to watch the games from
below. It was truly a favorite and amazing place to go!
Jackson Park is a golf course built by the Museum of Science and
Industry with lots of challenging holes. It is a great place where teams
and families can play together. The Jackie, as the locals call it, is the
citys first public golf course. It was built on top of a landfill holding
waste from the Chicago Worlds Fair. And the cost? Less than $23.00 for
18 holes.
Cominsky Park
Credit: Google Images
Imagine where Chicago having as many people as it does, would have found space to create golf courses
and parks if it werent for designing ways to cover the ill-spots. Waste management has certainly come a
long way and will continue to change as the needs of the people change too.
The company's network includes 367 collection operations, 346 transfer stations, 293
active landfill disposal sites, 16 waste-to-energy plants, 146 recycling plants, 111 beneficial-use landfill
gas projects and six independent power production plants.
Waste Management offers environmental services to nearly 27 million residential,
industrial, municipal and commercial customers in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico.
With 26,000 collection and transfer vehicles, the company has the largest trucking fleet in the waste
industry. Together with its competitor Republic Services, Inc, the two handle more than half of all
garbage collection in the United States.
In 1893, Harm Huizenga, a Dutch immigrant, began hauling garbage at $1.25/wagon in Chicago. In
1968, Wayne Huizenga, Dean Buntrock, and Larry Beck founded Waste Management, Inc. and began
aggressively purchasing many of the smaller garbage collection services across the country, as the
descendant firm of Harm Huizenga. Many people credit Waste Management for being the first garbage
collectors, but they are mistakenly incorrect.
In 1971, Waste Management went public, and by 1972, the company had made 133 acquisitions with
$82M in revenue. It had 60,000 commercial and industrial accounts and 600,000 residential customers
in 19 states and the provinces of Ontario and Quebec. In the 1980s, Waste Management
acquired Service Corporation of America (SCA) to become the largest waste hauler in the country.
Contents
1. Biography
2. Career
4. Designs created by Harm Huizenga
5. Other Notable Doings