General Electric Company (GE), The Clorox Company (CLX): Save Your Portfolio by Saving the Earth

Cleaning up our trash

Waste Management, Inc. (NYSE:WM) may not have made the Global 100 but it is a green company with an emphasis on its recycling operations. It was honored for the sixth straight year as one of  2013 World’s Most Ethical Companies by the international Ethisphere Institute on metrics of sustainability, business ethics, governance, and anti-corruption practices.

It is the biggest waste management and recycling services provider in North America. It has the highest yield of these companies at 3.70% but also the highest P/E of 22.19. The PEG is also extended at 3.47.

Lower volumes as companies move to less waste in packaging have hurt numbers most recently. Waste Management is looking to the future with ambitious energy conversion plans using the waste and landfill gas it collects and then converting it to energy.  It has also been converting its trucks to natural gas, working closely with Clean Energy Fuels Corp (NASDAQ:CLNE). Their compressed natural gas fleet now numbers 2,000.

As with GE, this upcoming quarter could be lackluster but the company already guided lower. CEO David Steiner recently appeared on Mad Money and Cramer blessed the name as a stealth play on housing. Steiner told Cramer  that Waste Management creates more energy from its facilities, five times more, than all the US solar companies combined. Solid green cred and greenbacks with that yield, too.

Steiner did address the thought uppermost on investors’ minds; would they become a REIT. He neither denied nor confirmed. Activist investor Bill Ackman derided the probability on April 16,  going so far as to call it “absurd.” In other words, don’t hold your breath Waste Management investors.

Or just clean up

These companies pay decent if not plentiful yields. If that’s your aim you might want to go with the Dividend Aristocrat, The Clorox Company (NYSE:CLX), with its history of consistent raises (as you can see on the chart). If you feel infrastructure is the future, innovative General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) is your Earth Day inspired buy. Alternative energy, recycling, and a housing play float your boat? Waste Management won’t let you down. Do your portfolio and Mother Nature a favor but wait for pullbacks.

CLX Dividend data by YCharts

The article Save Your Portfolio by Saving the Earth originally appeared on Fool.com.

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