Overly Conscientious: What's Wrong with MIami Shores Recycling

 By John Dorschner

MiamiWebNews.com

 

This photo says a lot: This resident in central Miami Shores wants to be a super-recycler. While the village allots one bin to a house, and some conscientious residents ask for a second, this person has … FOUR!

Truth is, the resident would have been more thoughtful if he/she just put it all in the garbage.

Why? All the material is in plastic garbage bags. Perhaps the resident was thinking that the bags protected recycling from rain or getting blown away.

In fact, the village’s website warns emphatically: “Any recyclable material placed in plastic bags DOES NOT get recycled! It goes to the landfill!”

Actually, that’s the best-case scenario, as we’ll see in a minute.

Truth is, the village has a reputation for doing an excellent job with recycling, but the devil is in the details. 

      INACCURACIES IN VILLAGE INSTRUCTIONS

The village’s website and an instruction sheet distributed with recycling bins says that juice boxes and milk cartons are recyclable. In fact, the center where the Shores takes its material doesn’t recycle those items.

Then there’s difficult problem of plastic. The instruction sheet says incorrectly about recyclable plastic: “Items with recycle symbol stamped on the bottom with any number. Milk jugs, food containers, pre-packaged grocery items.”

The village website is closer to being correct when it says only this about plastic: “Plastic Bottles (Any # can be recycled).”

The village did not immediately respond when I asked for comment.

       SEEING WHERE SHORES RECYCLING GOES 

The reality, which I learned when I visited the Waste Connections recycling center where the Shores material goes, is it recycles No. 1 and No. 2 plastic, mostly water/soda bottles and detergent/milk jugs. 

The recycling center, located near NW 37^th Avenue and State Road 112, is a “single-stream” plant, as is virtually every recycling facility in America. There are small differences between them, but generally all operate in the same basic way. (To see how the facility operates, click HERE for story and photos. Video of what happens to Shore recycling is available HERE.)

At the start of the fast-moving conveyer belt, two workers on either side try to grab the biggest problem items, including propane tanks and plastic garbage bags. They tossed the material in holes that led to bins for the stuff to be sent to landfills.

                      GARBAGE BAGS SHUT DOWN                                                    RECYCLING CENTERS

The reason: Plastic bags clog the gears and belts of the recycling center. This center has to be shut down three or four times a day to clear out the bags from the system, I was told.

In fact, many plastic bags filled with recyclables get ripped up when in the truck or dumped into the initial pile at the facility. That means the plastic is loose and is likely to gum up the system. The more contamination in the system, the recycling pros say, the more material gets rejected – and becomes mere garbage.

For details on the do’s and don’ts of recycling, read my story HERE.

I live in central Miami Shores, and I often take sunrise walks. On Thursdays, our area’s recycling day, I see plenty of errors: Stuff that doesn’t belong in bins (plastic coat hangers, greasy pizza boxes, Ziploc bags) and a lot of material in garbage bags.

                 SHORES 'DOES A GOOD JOB'

Overall, however, John Heinemann of Waste Connections says, “Miami Shores does a good job.”

Jim McCoy, who handles recycling for the Shores public works department, said in an interview that only 10 to 12 percent of Shores recycling is contaminated. That compares with a Miami-Dade County study in 2020 that showed a 48.8 percent contamination rate of recycling picked up by county trucks.

What’s more, McCoy said, 85 to 90 percent of Shores residents recycle – a high rate.

McCoy said the workers who pick up the recycling examine it before putting it in the truck and reject what’s inappropriate. “We do have some people that throw away things that are not recyclable. But we don’t take them. By having the kind of bins that we have, we can leave the non-recyclables there. We’ve gotten garden hoses because they think they’re rubber or something. Pizza boxes….  So our loads are very clean when we take them to the recyclers.”

My experience: In the many months I have been examining neighborhood recycling, I’ve never seen any material rejected by the truck workers. Every bin I’ve seen is empty after the truck passes. That includes the dozens of times I’ve seen stuff wrapped in garbage bags.

               DOES SHORE HAVE GOOD BINS?

Esmond Scott, the village manager who previously served as manager of North Miami Beach, said the Shores has an advantage with its smallish bins, compared to the large 65-gallon bins used by many cities that are picked up and dumped by mechanical arms: In those, it’s easy to hide garbage at the bottom of the bin, unlike the Shores, where workers dump the contents by hand, said Scott.

The disadvantage of the Shores bins, one expert told me, was that they were open at the top – vulnerable to rain. Wet material is worthless – and if mixed with good material could mean a large bale being rejected. Perhaps that’s why so many residents protect the material with garbage bags.

“For the most part, we’re doing very, very good,” Scott told me in December. “We’re nailing it.”

Perhaps compared to other places. But we could do better. Here’s some other photos I’ve taken of Shores’ residents recycling mistakes.

I'm guessing much of the material in this last photo must have been rejected by the recycling truck.
For one thing, the chair seems to big to fit into the back of the truck. But note that the 
person is such a conscientious recycler that, in addition to Shores green bin in foreground, the person has gotten a n additional blue bin from somewhere.