In short: #3 — "Irreplaceable network of routes and landfills." Collection, transport and disposal of trash and recycling across "the absolute largest network of landfills in North America." The moat is a permitting problem: "New landfills are almost impossible to build. Zoning rules are strict, and people who live nearby fight them." Demand is non-negotiable — "trash isn't going away, and we make more of it every year" — with an option on top: "WM turns its landfills into energy, capturing renewable natural gas and selling it."
Waste Management collects rubbish and buries or recycles it, and owns the largest network of landfills in North America. The unglamorous asset is the whole thesis: a landfill is a hole in the ground with a permit, and permits are what nobody can get any more. Zoning rules are severe and local residents fight every application, so the sites that exist become steadily more valuable and the ones that would compete with them are never built.
Demand, meanwhile, needs no forecasting — societies keep producing waste, and slightly more of it each year. There is also a second business layered on top: rotting landfill produces methane, which WM captures and sells as renewable natural gas, turning a disposal cost into an energy revenue line.
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