Waste Management is well known as one of the biggest garbage companies in the country. The company serves nearly 20 million municipal, commercial, industrial, and residential customers through a network of 367 collection operations, 273 landfills, and 134 recycling plants.

Less than three years ago, Waste Management announced an ambitious plan to increase the value of the company's services while benefiting the environment. Their new tag line: "Think Green: Think Waste Management."

GreenBiz.com's Heather King talks with CEO David Steiner about reinventing business models, biofuels, Barbie dolls, and why Waste Management supports a zero waste future.

Heather King: Several years ago your executive team faced a paradox -- your company was in the business of collecting and disposing waste, yet your customers were asking for a zero-waste world. Tell us about your decision to "Think Green."

David Steiner: Our larger industrial customers have been driving the change. They are motivated for environmental and for business reasons. Walmart was one of the first. They put out 450,000 pounds of trash a day. They are looking for innovative ways to reduce costs and recognized the potential value in their waste.

In contrast, the average household puts out 4 1/2 pounds of trash a day. Everything got started with the home customers 25 years ago. Communities told their politicians, "We want a recycling program." Now, companies are driving the market.

So we said, "The interest in getting value from waste is not going be isolated to Walmart; it's going to spread to all of our large customers and beyond. It's going to be big and we need to figure out how we can make money on it." We are doing just that.

HK: Historically the waste business has been about operational efficiency. Now it is about extracting value from waste. How is this changing your business model?

DS: It used to be that waste was a straight chain, from customer to us to landfill. Going forward, it will be a circular, closed-loop chain. Some waste may go to landfill, but much is going to come back as products.

HK: Does this require you to significantly alter your corporate culture or the skill set of your employee base?

DS: We are an environmental services company, not a research and development company. We are trying to find ways to convert waste into higher value. We've started to team up with smart people -- like the investors at Kleiner Perkins -- who also see opportunity in rematerializing waste. In a sense, we are a venture capital firm making investments in new technologies. Kleiner just started a waste and water segment. We co-invested in a company that can take organics and convert the organics to energy.