It became known about the huge earnings of Bill Gates in landfills methane leaks

According to an investigation by Pro Publica, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates received $2.6 billion in dividends from Republic Services, an American landfill operator. At the same time, the entrepreneur increased his stake in the company to 38%, and the value of this stake is estimated at $ 29 billion.

Since 2020, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency inspectors have inspected at least 39 Republic Services landfills out of about 200. More than 1.4 thousand sites with excess of the permissible concentration of methane were found at the facilities - in some cases the indicator was 100-300 times higher than the federal standard, which created a risk of explosion.

Rob Litt, a spokesman for Republic Services, said the company is deploying hundreds of environmental specialists and engineers to fix the breach. At the same time, Republic Services opposed measures to reduce the volume of organic waste in landfills - it is their decomposition without oxygen access that leads to methane emissions, which increases global warming.

Bill Gates did not respond to requests from the publication about his investments and awareness of the company's problems. Notably, in 2015, he launched the Breakthrough Energy initiative to support climate technologies, and in 2019 sold shares in oil and gas companies, saying he did not want to profit from their growth in the absence of carbon-free alternatives.