By James R. Hagerty
Dean Buntrock was happily selling life insurance in Boulder, Colo., in 1956 when the death of his father-in-law thrust him into a very different business: hauling garbage in Chicago.
Buntrock, who died April 17 at the age of 94, initially was inclined to sell the family trash business, known as Ace Scavenger Service, with its fleet of a dozen trucks, founded by Harm Huizenga, a Dutch immigrant, in 1893. After taking a closer look, Buntrock saw opportunity. He decided to keep the business and expand it by acquiring other mom-and-pop trash collectors. Soon he acquired a waste-handling business in Milwaukee.
In the late 1960s, he teamed up with one of his wife's cousins, Wayne Huizenga, who had built up a waste-hauling business in Florida's Broward County. Their merged company went public in 1971 as Waste Management and raced around the country and then overseas to make more acquisitions.
A new era in trash
The days of dumping trash on the edge of town and lighting a match were ending. Both Waste Management and its biggest rival, Browning-Ferris Industries, saw that stricter environmental regulation would make it hard for small operators to remain in a business requiring far more investment in equipment and compliance procedures.
Waste Management bought not only haulers but landfills in the 1970s, giving the firm an advantage once dump permits became harder to obtain. The company diversified from garbage to the handling of all kinds of waste, including the most toxic varieties.
By the early 1980s, Waste Management -- led by Buntrock as chief executive -- was the biggest waste-disposal company in the U.S. and had operations as far away as Saudi Arabia and Argentina.
The business had its share of controversy. A 1983 investigation by the New York Times, finding violations of waste-handling regulations, caused the company's share price to drop and prompted it to overhaul compliance procedures. As of 1991, the company had paid fines and related settlements exceeding $50 million for infractions including shutting off pollution-monitoring devices and disposing of poisonous material by mixing it with oil, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The controversy was helpful for Waste Management in some ways. If complying with environmental regulations was easier, Buntrock told the Journal, "we'd have lots more competition. A lot of CEOs of other companies figure, 'Why do we need it?' "
After Buntrock retired in 1997, he and four other executives were accused in a civil case by the Securities and Exchange Commission of overstating profits by $1.7 billion between 1992 to 1997. Though Buntrock and the others didn't admit wrongdoing, they agreed in 2005 to pay more than $30 million to settle the SEC's lawsuit. Buntrock later told Waste News that the case involved "judgment issues" on how the relevant accounting should have been handled.
One of eight
Dean Lewis Buntrock was born June 6, 1931, and grew up in Columbia, S.D., a farming town that was then home to about 250 people. His parents, Rudy Buntrock and Lillian (Hustad) Buntrock, sold agricultural equipment. As a teenager, Buntrock drove grain trucks and worked as a salesman for the family firm.
After graduating from high school in a class of eight students, he served in the Army and studied business and history at St. Olaf College, a Lutheran school in Northfield, Minn.
In the 1960s, he led waste-industry efforts to create a trade association and set up a lobbying arm in Washington, D.C., as environmental legislation proliferated.
His marriage to Elizabeth Huizenga ended in divorce. He later married the former Rosemarie Nuzzo Parziale, an early office staff organizer at Waste Management. She survives him, along with three daughters from his first marriage, six granddaughters and two great-grandchildren.
St. Olaf awarded him a Founders Medal last year and said he and his family had donated more than $66.7 million to the college, beginning with a gift of $100 three years after his graduation. In retirement, he lived in Indian Wells, Calif. At age 88, he made his 40th pheasant-hunting trip to Ireland.
Write to reports@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 28, 2026 13:12 ET (17:12 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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