DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS

12 Months Ended

Dec. 31, 2012

DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS

NOTE 1—DESCRIPTION OF BUSINESS

We were incorporated in 1989 and presently serve a diverse customer base of over 541,000 customers throughout the United States, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and the United Kingdom.

We lease office space for our corporate offices in Lake Forest, Illinois. Domestically, we own or lease 59 processing facilities, the majority of which use autoclave waste processing technology. All of our processing facilities also serve as collection sites. We own or lease 91 additional transfer sites, 12 additional sales/administrative sites, and 54 recall and returns or communication services facilities. Internationally, we own or lease 94 processing facilities, the majority of which use autoclave waste processing technology. We also own or lease 50 additional transfer sites, 41 additional sales/administrative sites, 10 recall and returns services facilities, and we lease two landfills.

We use our fully integrated, national networks to provide a broad range of services to our customers including regulated waste management services and regulated recall and returns management services. Regulated waste management services include regulated waste removal services, sharps management services, products and services for infection control, and safety and compliance programs. Regulated recall and returns management services are physical services provided to companies and individual businesses that assist with the handling of products that are being removed from the supply chain due to recalls or expiration. These services also include advanced notification technology that is used to communicate specific instructions to the users of the product. Our waste treatment technology is primarily autoclaving, however we also use incineration and our proprietary electro-thermal-deactivation (“ETD”) system. We also provide communication services to healthcare providers to improve office productivity and communications with patients.

We have 7,933 employees in the United States, of which 437 are covered by collective bargaining agreements. Internationally, we have 5,312 employees, of which approximately 1,600 are covered by collective bargaining agreements, primarily in Latin America.

The accompanying consolidated financial statements have been prepared pursuant to the rules and regulations of the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States. The preparation of financial statements in conformity with these accounting principles requires us to make estimates and assumptions that affect the reported amounts of assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the financial statements and the reported amounts of revenue and expenses during the reporting period.

In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements included herein contain all adjustments necessary to present fairly our financial position as of December 31, 2012 and 2011 and the results of our operations, our cash flows, and our statement of changes in equity for the three years ended December 31, 2012, 2011 and 2010. Such adjustments are of a normal recurring nature. We have evaluated subsequent events through the date of filing this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

The preparation of the consolidated financial statements in conformity with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States requires management to make certain estimates and assumptions that affect the amount of reported assets and liabilities and disclosure of contingent assets and liabilities at the date of the consolidated financial statements and revenues and expenses during the periods reported. Actual results may differ from those estimates.