Jon Vander Ark
Chief Executive Officer at Republic Services
Thanks, Aaron. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining us. We delivered strong third quarter results by effectively executing our strategy that supports profitable growth and value creation. The Republic Services team continues to deliver world-class service and innovative solutions to meet the needs of our customers. During the quarter, we achieved revenue growth of 7% and generated adjusted EBITDA growth of 14%, expanded adjusted EBITDA margin by 210 basis points, reported adjusted earnings per share of $1.81 and produce $1.4 billion of adjusted free cash flow on a year-to-date basis.
Through our differentiated capabilities, customers yield, digital and sustainability, we continue to be well positioned to capture new opportunities and create long-term value for our stakeholders. Regarding customers, our focus on delivering world-class essential services continues to support organic growth and enhance customer loyalty. Our customer retention rate remained strong at more than 94%. Third quarter organic revenue growth was driven by strong pricing across the business.
Average yield on total revenue was 4.6%, and average yield on related revenue was 5.5%. This level of pricing continued to exceed our cost inflation and help drive 210 basis points of EBITDA margin expansion. Organic volume on total revenue declined 1.2%. And Volume losses were heavily concentrated to the cyclical portions of our business, including special waste and construction activity.
Turning to our expanding digital capabilities. We continue to advance the implementation of digital tools to improve the experience for both customers and employees. Deployment of Empower, our new fleet and equipment management system is underway. Empower is designed to increase maintenance technician productivity and enhance warranty recovery. Deployment of the new system is anticipated to be completed by the end of 2025.
We estimate Empower will deliver $20 million annual cost savings once fully implemented. We continue to benefit from innovative technology on our recycling and waste collection routes. Our platform utilizes cameras to identify overfill containers and recycling contamination. This technology generated more than $60 million in incremental revenue in the first year of operation. Moving on to sustainability.
We believe that our sustainability innovation investments in plastic circularity and renewal natural gas position us to continue grow and create long-term value creation. Development of our polymer centers and Blue Polymers joint venture facilities continues to move forward. As Vegas Polymer center production volumes continued to increase throughout the quarter. Construction is progressing on our Indianapolis polymer Center with initial equipment commission. This operation will be co-located with a blue Polymers production facility.
We expect construction on this facility to be complete by the year of this year, with earnings contribution in the second half of 2025. We recently broke ground on a blue Polymers production facility in Buckeye, Arizona, this facility will complement the Las Vegas Polymer Center. We expect the completion of this facility in late 2025. We continue to bring decarbonization solutions to the market that will unlock value for all of our stakeholders including the communities we serve.
The renewable natural gas projects we're developing with our partners continue to advance. Two projects came online during the third quarter, bringing the total completed this year to four projects. We expect four additional RNG projects to be completed during the fourth quarter. We continue to advance our commitment to fleet electrification. We currently have 28 electric collection vehicles in operation and expect to have more than 50 EVs in our fleet by the end of the year.
We have 18 facilities with commercial scale EV charging infrastructure. As part of our approach to sustainability, we are committed to being an employer of choice in the markets we serve. Our third quarter employee turnover rate improved more than 100 basis points compared to the prior year and we are proud to be certified as a great place to work for the eighth consecutive year.
With respect to capital allocation, year-to-date, we have invested $104 million in strategic acquisitions. Our acquisition pipeline remains supportive of continued activity in both recycling and waste and environmental solutions. We currently have more than $200 million of transactions that are expected to close by the end of the year. Year-to-date, we returned $834 million to shareholders, which includes $330 million of share repurchases.
I will now turn the call over to Brian, who will provide details on the quarter.