Broward County only recycles 38% of its trash — well below the state’s recommended 75% threshold.
“We used to have 60% recycling, which is really good. We had two waste to energy plants at the time, and granted, that allows for recycling — or it's given credit for recycling — but we are down now in the lower 30s. We've lost a generation, honestly,” said Broward County Commissioner Beam Furr.
Furr is a member of the executive board of the Solid Waste Authority whose mission is to modernize the way Broward disposes of its waste.
The Solid Waste Authority was created in 2023 when 28 cities and the county signed an interlocal agreement (ILA). The organization has just ratified its Solid Waste Masterplan that seeks to lay the groundwork for the next 40 years of waste disposal. A crucial component is the cooperation of the member cities.
“By having 28 cities all rowing in the same direction, you get economies of scale, not only in the commodities market, but in negotiation. If 28 cities are going to a disposal site, our ability to negotiate better prices is tremendously better,” said Furr.
Furr also praises efforts from local businesses like the Florida Panthers who have increased their efforts to recycle more with tremendous success. He says it's time now for Broward County to get on board.
READ MORE: How the Florida Panthers modernized their recycling to win off the ice
The passage of the masterplan triggered a 100-day window for the ratification of the plan. To date, 15 cities and the County have approved it, but to be implemented the plan needs passage from cities that make up 80% of the population of its members. The deadline is Aug. 14.
WLRN’s Carlton Gillespie spoke with Furr about the state of waste disposal in the county and how the Solid Waste Authority's Masterplan can address the challenges Broward faces. The conversation was edited for length and clarity.
WLRN: 99% of people in this county interface with trash in one way — They pull it to the curb, and then it's out of sight, out of mind.
Furr: That's exactly right. They pull it out, they pull it to the curb and say goodbye to it and have no idea where it goes, what happens to it for the rest of its life and what kind of things that the county has to do to make sure that it's handled properly, so that it doesn't become hazardous, that it stays out of the water table.
There's a whole lot more to it. But luckily most of us just have to just take it out to the curb.
I also think the thing that people may not realize is that we're in a bit of a crisis point with trash — all over South Florida — but in Broward County especially.
Particularly here because we're landlocked. A lot of places throughout the United States have room to landfill it. We don't have any extra land. We're built out — at least in Broward County. Our landfill was reaching capacity. We have since expanded it but we did that with a caveat. Our caveat was we would expand it by 100 feet higher, but we decided to take all the organics out of it. Why? Because methane was being generated there. Methane is one of the most pernicious greenhouse gases there is. It's like a huge blanket. So we are going to be doing composting with all of the source-separated organics in Okeechobee.
What that means is, even though we expanded the room for the landfill, we've lessened the types of trash that can go into it. So we have, in a sense, we have a less diverse capacity to handle trash here in Broward.
We still have the waste-to-energy plant, which can take anything. But to your point, what I think the entire point of the interlocal agreement and the Solid Waste Authority is to find ways to divert things to where they can be handled the best.
Yard waste, for instance, is about 17% of the waste stream. We should be turning all that into mulch. 17% is food waste. That can be turned into compost. That's low-hanging fruit. We should be doing that on a regular basis. But, you have to stand up facilities to do that. You don't wanna build a facility unless you know stuff is gonna be going there. So the point of establishing the Solid Waste Authority is flow control. You have dedicated streams of garbage going various places. But you're right, we're kind of diverting where everything is going.
It's like a big version of those trash cans that have cans and bottles in one can and trash and food waste in the other . You're doing the countywide version of that.
That's exactly right. And you know, there's a lot of countries way ahead of us on this stuff. I took a trip to the Netherlands last year, and they had a different color garbage can for every day.
They are able to recycle things, and they're able to use that material in their cities for all kinds of things. The plastic becomes park benches made of plastic wood. There's all kinds of different ways — plastic becomes carpet, glass is used for road aggregate.
They're saving a lot of money, and that's the other part of it because some of this gets expensive, and I know our citizens want us to be mindful of how much things cost. This is a way to do it.
There's a front end and a back end cost. On the front end, we may spend more building up a facility to turn plastic into plastic wood or road aggregate, but on the back end, are there long-term savings there?
Yes, there are. And the other savings is by doing it together. By having 28 cities all rowing in the same direction, you get economies of scale, not only in the commodities market, but in negotiation. If 28 cities are going to a disposal site, our ability to negotiate better prices is tremendously better.
Right. Well, and you mentioned that there are other countries and other places that do recycling a lot better than us. Just how bad is it in Broward?
We used to be pretty good. We used to have 60% recycling, which is really good. We had two waste to energy plants at the time that allows for recycling — or it's given credit for recycling– but we are down now in the lower 30s.
We've lost a generation, honestly. We had a resource recovery board that was doing a lot of education, a lot of outreach. We were working with the schools, all the cities. That dissolved in 2013. So for 13 years, we have not been having the kind of education outreach that is necessary.
Palm Beach, I think puts $4 million a year into education. We plan on doing that or more, and it's necessary. There's a lot of wishcycling going on right now. People go to their recycling bin and hope that whatever they're throwing in there might get recycled, and consequently a lot of it is contaminated because people don't know what to put in, and that brings our recycling rate way down.
So we have to do a lot better job of educating people what can be recycled and why to recycle it. Why should we do this? What kind of jobs does it create? What kind of products come from that?
So we've got our work cut out for us on that.
In general, I think municipal governments across the state have this of Sword of Damocles of property tax reform, and are worried about spending money. You alluded a little bit to savings on the back end, but if eliminating property taxes comes in, are cities gonna be strapped to accomplish some of these goals?
Most garbage, at least in most municipalities that I know, are enterprise funds, much like utilities. They're not dependent on property tax. They are user fees. It kind of falls outside of the property tax, but even given that, I think for every elected official, it's incumbent upon us to find the best and most frugal way to deliver services.
