Clean Harbors, Inc. is a North American environmental and industrial services company listed on the New York Stock Exchange as CLH and headquartered in Norwell, Massachusetts. It collects, transports, treats and disposes of hazardous and industrial waste, provides emergency spill response and industrial cleaning to refineries, chemical plants, manufacturers and utilities, and through its Safety-Kleen arm re-refines used oil into base oils and lubricants. For oil and gas customers it runs field services including production services, lodging, surface rentals and seismic support.

Scale of the disposal network

The company was founded in 1980 and today operates in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico and India. Its disposal and recycling network includes:

  • United States: more than 50 service centres, seven landfills, five wastewater treatment facilities, four incineration locations and two solvent recycling facilities, with disposal and recycling capacity available in all 50 states
  • Canada: more than 90 service locations and 17 waste management facilities across eight provinces
  • International: environmental services in northern Mexico and specialty industrial work at selected overseas sites

Clean Harbors added a new incinerator at Kimball and reported incineration utilisation of 91 per cent in the second quarter of 2026 against 86 per cent a year earlier, with landfill volumes up 7 per cent.

Two reporting segments

Clean Harbors reports through Environmental Services and Safety-Kleen Sustainability Solutions. Environmental Services covers Technical Services, which handles disposal and recycling, together with Safety-Kleen Environmental Services, Field Services and Industrial Services. Technical Services revenue rose 18 per cent year on year in the second quarter of 2026, and the segment recorded a 27.9 per cent adjusted EBITDA margin, its seventeenth consecutive quarter of year-on-year margin expansion. Safety-Kleen Sustainability Solutions collects used oil, re-refines it into base oils and lubricants, and sells parts washers and related services; its revenue rose 41 per cent and adjusted EBITDA 143 per cent in the same quarter as market prices for re-refined products strengthened. The segment gathered 61 million gallons of waste oil during the quarter and is producing Group III base oil grades.

Second-quarter 2026 results

Revenue for the quarter ended 30 June 2026 reached a record 1.735 billion US dollars, 12 per cent above the prior-year period, with income from operations of 268.9 million dollars, up 28 per cent. Net income rose 34 per cent to 170.5 million dollars, or 3.22 dollars per diluted share, and adjusted EBITDA increased 22 per cent to 409.0 million dollars at a 23.6 per cent margin. First-half revenue was 3.195 billion dollars and first-half adjusted EBITDA 656.9 million dollars. The company reported a year-to-date total recordable incident rate of 0.46.

Contracts and network additions

In July 2026 Clean Harbors announced a ten-year disposal contract with an estimated value of 600 million dollars for incineration waste and complex wastewater from a customer expanding its US manufacturing footprint; volumes start in the fourth quarter of 2026 and are expected to reach full capacity in 2030. In May 2026 it acquired Terra Nova Solutions, and the Environmental Services segment continues to build out its incineration, landfill, wastewater and field services capacity in the United States and Canada.

PFAS, emergency response and outlook

Clean Harbors has built a PFAS service line around incineration, landfill and wastewater treatment, publishing formal disposal and treatment guidance standards in April 2026 and running a growing pipeline of private and government PFAS work in the United States and Canada, including a large filtration project that followed earlier emergency response work. The company is also introducing an industrial services offering aimed at data centres. It raised full-year 2026 guidance to adjusted EBITDA of 1.35 to 1.41 billion dollars and adjusted free cash flow of 520 to 580 million dollars, and in September 2026 priced 600 million dollars of senior notes due 2034 at a 6.250 per cent coupon. Founder Alan McKim retired as executive chairman in May 2026 and Robert Willett became board chairman in July 2026; Mike Battles and Eric Gerstenberg serve as co-chief executives.