JJC: Normally, I use the Sell Block to tell you about stocks that should be avoided... or to humiliate Wall of Shame CEOs who are busy destroying their own companies... But, tonight, we're doing a reverse, self-flagellation Sell Block... We need to punish someone who's committed the closest thing to a capital crime in Cramerica... Missing an opportunity to make you money... The name of this financial miscreant?... James J. Cramer, Esquire...

That's right... I'm putting myself in the Sell Block tonight. I'm locking the door, throwing away the key, and putting myself in the sixth borough of New York... Riker's Island. Why?...

A while back, I thought about recommending a stock called Covanta Holding Corporation (CVA). This is a company that turns garbage into energy. To me, it smacked of alchemy... Plus, I heard made up names like Covanta...

CVA was around $25 when I passed on it. It quickly went to $30...

Luckily, the action in CVA today, after the quarter, has given me a chance to redeem myself. CVA is down big today... off a dollar... 3.3%... after the Street didn't cotton to their earnings report last night. I think they're report was fine. I want to take this chance while the stock is still down and still cheap... to make the case for CVA that I should have made a long time ago, to get myself out of financial Riker's Island...

This is my "community service" for missing you that opportunity. I call it turnstile justice. It's like picking up trash on the side of the highway...

This is a fabulous business because, as we all know, human beings are gluttonous slobs who produce enormous amounts of trash... Americans especially...

CVA is the largest operator of waste-to-energy plants in the U.S. It controls 50% of the market and, with energy prices so high, this business couldn't be better...

The company processes 15 million tons of waste a year. 32 facilities. This is a big company. CVA takes 5% of America's solid waste, every year, and turns it into energy. I regard that as pretty impressive...

You want green? The EPA says that waste energy has less environmental impact than almost any other source of electricity. It's got other power businesses too... waste wood, methane gas, hydropower in the U.S., coal in China and the Phillipines, liquid fuel in India, and natural gas in Bangledesh...

CVA is also an aspiring ROW-er... In December the company announced their second joint venture in China, to develop waste-to-energy plants... because those Chinese communists... they're the best capitalists in the world. They've become more and more like us... they're generating more and more junk, and more juice to power their gadgets... They should need exactly this kind of stock.

The Chinese has already outlined plans to reduce the amount of waste used in waste-to-energy plants to 30% of all waste produced... in China by 2030.

Just take a second to imagine that...

30% of all the garbage in China... and CVA should have a big slice of the business of turning that trash into power. What a break for us that this stock got hit today.

CVA is also expanding into Europe. A project in Dublin... some aggressive moves into other parts of the continent...

There's also the Sam Zell factor...

This is negative and positive... He brought CVA out of bankruptcy in 2003. The stock was around $3 bucks. Now, it's around $28. Zell's involvement was actually the original reason why I avoided the stock... which, in retrospect, was a pretty bad idea... You see, I thought this would be more like the Tribune Corp. deal, meaning that I just didn't want to do business with Zell. The Tribune Corp. deal, I think, stinks for the employees that got it... Zell was behind that.

This one stinks too. But like trash into cash... and I can get into that sweet smell of success...

The bottom line...