MIAMI – The clock is ticking for the Miami-Dade County Commission to make a final decision on how the county is going to manage the 5 million tons of waste Miami-Dade residents make each year.
It’s been two years since the county’s incinerator burnt down, with landfill space quickly running out.
Local 10 News’ Louis Aguirre recently traveled to Austin, Texas to see how the city’s Resource Recovery Department has for the past 14 years used a zero-waste strategy to divert as trash as possible away from landfills without burning it. Balcones Recycling is an important partner.
The company’s innovative materials recovery facility is a big reason why.
“This is where everything starts, this is the tip floor and we process about 5000 plus tons a month,” said Balcones Recycling Director of Marketing Alexandra Gyarfas. “Anything that we invest in, the facilities that we build, are all designed to maximize recovery and save valuable material from the landfills.”
Cardboard, paper, glass, specific types of plastic, and metals like aluminum and tin, materials that can be sold, repurposed, and reused without being buried in the ground, are helping Austin get to 90% zero waste by 2040.
Right now they’re 37% there.
“So our folks are on board,” said Richard McHale, director of Austin Resource Recovery. “We still have contamination issues in the recycling. We’re about 20% contamination, so we’ve been working on trying to get that lowered.”
Contamination occurs when people throw things in the recycling bin that don’t belong there, like plastic bags.
“They wrap around the system so they can cause a safety hazard, and damage the equipment,” said Gyarfas.
High contamination rates like Miami-Dade County’s 40%, and even 70% in parts of the city of Miami, can drive the cost of recycling way up.
Austin’s contamination rate is 12.8% lower than the national average, thanks to effective labeling on its bins and public education campaigns.
“Having very clear, digestible, easy to process at a quick glance signage is very, very important,” said Gyarfas.
So is state-of-the-art technology that makes the entire sorting process more efficient. Infrared light scans material as it goes through the conveyor belt and the system uses jets of air to separate it.
“It can register an incredible amount of material very quickly, and then very effectively separate onto its own conveyor so we can recover it,” said Gyarfas. “So it allows us to ultimately produce a really high-quality bale.”
More recycled material means more profit and less trash, but there’s another MVP in this game.
Organics By Gosh is a large-scale green waste and food waste composter that in 2012, led the way for the city of Austin’s resource recovery program to execute its ambitious masterplan.
“Our goal really is to emulate what actually happens naturally on the forest floor,” said Organics By Gosh General Manager Zach Thomas. “All we’ve done is industrialize and accelerate it.”
Added McHale: “In order to get to our zero-waste goal. I mean, composting is a critical part of that, because of the volume of material that goes in there.”
Around 24% of what Americans throw away is food and yard waste, which is harmful to the planet when landfilled because of the enormous amount of heat-trapping methane and carbon dioxide it produces. Organics By Gosh changed the game.
Currently, the company processes about 40,000 tons of organic waste a year, and that’s just from the city of Austin, which translates into 240,000 cubic yards.
That’s waste that would have otherwise gone to landfill.
One-hundred percent of Austin’s food and green waste residential curbside collection program, as well as food waste from over 300 restaurants, is composted at Organics By Gosh, mimicking nature and scaling the process to create nutrient-rich soil.
“This is freshly screened material,” said Thomas. “This is no longer anything having to do with waste. It does not stink. It doesn’t have anything bad going on. This is ideal garden soil material.”
Black gold that needs less water, less fertilizer, less pesticides and is bagged and sold for big money to landscapers and big box stores.
“Just what you see here, between this pile and the couple other generations right behind it, roughly $204,000 in revenue,” said Thomas.
Former Miami City Commissioner and current Sierra Club rep Ken Russell first went to Austin a few weeks ago, seeking more sustainable solutions to Miami-Dade’s current landfill crisis, one that doesn’t include burning trash.
“There is no smell, there (are) no fires, there is no leaching, and it produces really good environmental product,” said Russell after visiting Austin. “We can absolutely do what Austin has done and is doing. We have the capability, we have the technology, we have the funding.”
Right now, Miami-Dade County Commissioners have directed Mayor Daniella Levine Cava to receive and evaluate new landfilling and incineration proposals from the private sector, before a final decison on the future of Miami-Dade’s waste management strategy is made in July.
“Right now we are working on pathways for testing and piloting,” said Levine Cava. “We are hopeful that we will be able to come up with a solution that will allow for large scale composting.”
The mayor was asked if zero waste was possible in Miami-Dade County.
“It is possible to really get very, very close,” she said. “That is our goal, to approach zero waste and in the future, with new technologies, we might even get there.”
The mayor can make her recommendation, but it is the full board of county commissioners who will ultimately decide.
As for composting, the pilot program is necessary because of all the state regulatory environmental and zoning requirements that must be met before the county can greenlight a large scale composting program, like Organics By Gosh in Austin.