Recycling rate slumps to 48 percent in Broward

All of the recycling done by Broward residents hasn’t stopped ever greater amounts of trash from being piled up and buried in the county’s landfill.

Even some of the material people are putting out at the curb to be recycled ends up in the landfill, such as glass bottles that no one wants to buy and paper products ruined for reuse because they are contaminated by food, grease or broken glass.

When it comes to the state’s goal of recycling 75 percent of all trash and garbage by 2020, Broward County has been going in the wrong direction. The county’s 60 percent rate in 2012 dropped to 48 percent by 2016. Figures for 2017 aren’t available yet.

The only reason the county’s numbers aren’t even lower is because the state allows trash that is burned in incinerators to produce energy to be considered recycled.

The county and its cities, hoping to turn the recycling numbers around, have been trying to come together on a solution. A yearlong study that will deliver recommendations is expected to be completed in June.

One idea is to build a recycling facility on a Pompano Beach site that the cities and county own together. The 25-acre property is between Copans and Sample roads on the east side of Florida’s Turnpike, near the county landfill that is popularly called Mount Trashmore.

Broward Mayor Beam Furr supports having a county-run recycling center. He thinks the only way for the county to reach the 75 percent goal is for the county to find a way to use the recyclable materials being collected in the county — rather than be at the mercy of markets with fluctuating demands.

“The important thing is, as a county, we need to close the loop. How do you use what has been recycled?” Furr said.

Some possibilities include using crushed glass in roadway projects or recycled plastic to create park benches.

“Glass is not being recycled. That’s like 25 percent of the waste stream,” Furr said. “It’s being landfilled.”

How does Broward County stack up against its neighbors? It’s ahead of Miami-Dade County, which recycled only 43 percent of its waste in 2016, but far behind Palm Beach County, which was at 72 percent.

Palm Beach County’s percentage shot up significantly the past few years after it opened a second waste-to-energy incinerator that produces electricity. Broward’s percentage went down after one of two Wheelabrator incineration plants in the county was shut down and dismantled. Some of Broward’s trash is now being taken to the Palm Beach incinerator.

When counting only traditional recycling and not the incinerated waste, Palm Beach County is still ahead of Broward.

Palm Beach County had a 45 percent traditional recycling rate in 2016, while Broward was at 34 percent. Miami-Dade was at 33 percent.

Broward County and Miami-Dade are not alone in struggling to increase recycling.

A report released in December by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection said the state was not going to reach its 2020 goal without significant changes. The statewide recycling figure was 56 percent in 2016, including incinerated waste.

The report cited problems such as not having strong market demand for many of the recyclable materials. Also, product manufacturers are using less and lighter packaging than before, greatly reducing material that used to be recycled.

Even how the material is being collected can have an effect. While the report says single-stream recycling, which Broward County uses, has made it easier for homeowners to recycle, it has other drawbacks. Single-stream recycling allows residents to put all of their recyclables in one cart that’s placed at the curb for pickup.

It has resulted in "the collection of unwanted materials and poorly sorted recyclables,” creating contamination that often ends up requiring 30 percent or more of the collected material to be put in a landfill instead of recycled, the report said.

Palm Beach County, with the higher recycling percentage, still has residents sort their recyclables, with paper products placed in yellow bins and glass, plastic and metals in blue bins.

The state report also said increasing the recycling of construction and demolition debris is also critical to reaching the goal, because it is a large portion of the overall waste stream.

In Broward County, much of that debris is not being recycled but is being put in a county-owned landfill in southwest Broward. The county could recycle more of that debris, but it would require buying the necessary equipment and hiring a staff, Furr said.

Furr is concerned the public will be turned off to recycling if the county doesn’t find a way to use what is already being collected.

“It’s going to require a very robust educational program on what can be recycled and what can’t,” Furr said.

Commissioner Tim Ryan said one key might be to give incentives to the public to recycle. In the past, local governments received bonuses based on the amount of recyclables collected, but Ryan is more interested in something that goes directly to residents.

“If there’s some way there could be a financial benefit of recycling, we could drive up those numbers considerably,” Ryan said.

In Hollywood, residents can sign up for a program where they receive points based on how much they recycle, which can then be used to get discount coupons for a variety of services.

But Commissioner Chip LaMarca said the incentive will never be high enough.

“It costs money to recycle, to physically do it,” LaMarca said. “I think you tell people it’s what’s right [to do].”