Waste crisis: Can Miami-Dade learn from Palm Beach County’s recycling example?

By Alyssa Ramos, Ammy Sanchez

On August 21, 2023

Waste management is a crisis topic in Miami-Dade County these days.

The county is running out of landfill and other spaces for all its garbage – especially after a fire earlier this year gutted a waste incinerator plant in Doral that processed about half the trash the county collects.

But aside from those difficulties, Miami-Dade is also staring at a $40 million budget deficit for waste collection. Not to mention that residents in the County recycle less than a fifth of their garbage and also have one of the state’s highest recycling contamination rates.

In response, Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava has proposed a $3-per-month-per-household increase in solid waste collection fee. But the debate has morphed into whether the county should even recycle at all.

By contrast, Palm Beach County has the best recycling rates in the state.

Dominique Burkhardt, a senior attorney at the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice says there are a lot of issues for Miami-Dade county to navigate.

“What’s key here is that this requires valuing these alternative forms of managing waste,” Burkhardt said, speaking on The South Florida Roundup. “And really figuring out what are the ways that we can do this, so that we can move away from some of these larger looming issues around our landfill capacity or the contentious issues around incinerators.”

Burkhardt said that the county’s current system of burning waste not only poses environmental costs but social ones. The former Covanta energy plant in Doral had drawn ire from nearby residents who woke up to its fumes.

The Miami-Dade County Department of Solid Waste Management told WLRN that they acknowledge that “important changes on how we deal with our waste for the years to come” have to be made, and that they are “working on a plan that [will stand] the test of time,” and that “recycling [will be] an important tool in our toolbox.”

Miami-Dade’s recycling contamination rate – people throwing in stuff that shouldn’t be thrown in, that can’t be recycled and messes up the whole batch – has been as high as 50% in recent years. These days it’s closer to 40%.

But some counties seem to be doing it right. Palm Beach County has higher rates of recycling and Charlotte County in Southwest Florida has seen success in their program, with a consistently low recycling contamination rate between 13% and 17%.

Lorenzo Daetz, who supervises solid waste in Charlotte County, attributes the success to educational campaigns, using regional television advertisements and targeting more low-income communities.

“I think if you were to take certain areas of [Miami-Dade] and focus on educating them group by group … I think that is the key,” he told host Tim Padgett.

Burkhardt from Earthjustice said that a grassroots approach could prove more productive — with government officials going into different communities and explaining recycling best practices in various languages like Spanish, Haitian. Creole and Portuguese.

“There has to be a way for these concepts to be broken down on how to properly recycle,” she said. “[…] But it requires a political will, a cultural shift. And it’s really our local government we’re looking at, to be the leader, in that they are the ones who should be leading that charge.”

Palm Beach stands out with a ‘dual stream’ system

In Palm Beach County, the solid waste authority was a product of legislation. Local leaders since the late eighties have instituted what is called a dual-stream process.

“Waste is local. And what that means is that counties come in different sizes. They come with different financial abilities, they come with different landscapes,” said Willie Puz, the legislative and public affairs manager for the Solid Waste Authority of Palm Beach. ”And so to be able to efficiently and effectively transport, collect, deliver, process and final disposal, that waste, it’s going to be up to that county and what resources they have available to them.”

The “dual stream” process prevents cross-contamination. That means instead of one recycling bin, Palm Beach County residents have two — one for plastics, glass and aluminum and the other for paper and cardboard. Most counties like Broward, Monroe and Miami-Dade are “single stream,” which means residents don’t have to manually sort items.

Last year, Palm Beach County had the highest overall rate of recycling in the state at 80%, according to data from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. The overall rate includes various forms of recycling besides the traditional one — think plastic, paper, aluminum.

Monroe County has a 50% overall recycling rate, while Broward County follows with a recycling rate of 41%. Miami-Dade County has a 37% recycling rate.

Most of South Florida’s recyclables wind up in Broward County. In fact, the county houses one of the largest trash processing plants in the country. Miami-Dade, Monroe and parts of Collier County also send their discarded items there. The Reuters recycling center, owned by Waste Management, can process up to 50 tons of recyclables in an hour.

Contamination is a big obstacle for counties and cities because of what is called “wish-cycling,” or when people recycle items they think are recyclable into the recycling stream.

“We are challenged with a diverse community and one with a lot of part time visitors. Recycling programs differ from county to county and state to state,” said Dr. Nancy Gassman, Fort Lauderdale’s Public Works Assistant Director. “It is difficult to communicate what is acceptable to be recycled, particularly with language challenges, in such an urban, culturally rich environment.”

Gassman said the city often reiterates the message, “if in doubt, throw it out. Don’t put it in your recycling.”

In Monroe County, tourism spells trouble

In the Florida Keys, there are no incinerators or landfills along the island chain. Instead, they have three transfer stations from which recycling gets delivered to a facility in Pembroke Pines.

And much like the rest of South Florida, Monroe County faces a common obstacle to recycling: tourism.

“People come here to have a good time,” said Monroe County Director of Solid Waste Management Cheryl Sullivan. “Recycling isn’t at the top of the list.”

Sullivan’s department covers the unincorporated parts of Monroe County. She said that recycling isn’t mandatory for residents and businesses, so it can be a struggle to continually remind people of the benefits of recycling for people who are only here to visit.

But if some Florida counties don’t get more serious about waste management issues like recycling, it might end up spoiling their good time.

This piece was republished from WLRN.