MIAMI — Environmentalists are crestfallen after last week’s decision by Miami-Dade County Commissioners to green light the construction of a new waste to energy trash incinerator to replace the one that burned down.
The county is even considering building it in the Everglades, so communities wouldn’t be affected.
“What a shame for the environment and the Everglades, a unanimous vote to move forward with burning garbage, possibly the country’s largest incinerator for burning garbage,” said Sierra Club lobbyist Ken Russell.
Right now, Miami Dade County produces over 5 million tons of trash each year, more than double the national average, and the county is rapidly running out of landfill space since the Doral incinerator went up in flames in 2023. It used to burn about a million tons of garbage every year
“We have to reduce our cost by reducing our trash and I am fully committed to that,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
Still, environmentalists say burning it is not the answer.
“If we want to fix our waste crisis, we must reduce and divert away from landfills and reclaim this really valuable material,” said Volunteer Clean Up co-founder Dave Doebler. “Like aluminum, like cardboard, like plastics.”
That also includes glass.
Even though, according to the latest available data from Florida Department of Environmental Protection, less than 7% of glass in Miami-Dade County is actually being recycled. It’s important to note that unlike plastic, glass can be infinitely recyclable.
“To me, it’s mind blowing that we are sending this material that we need so much to a landfill, without being recycled,” says Glass for Life co-founder Francisco Torres.
Torres is also the founder of Compost for Life, which he launched in 2020. It’s a pick-up service to help residents and businesses reduce their organic waste going to landfill by composting it.
Recapturing glass was a logical next step.
“When we send it to a landfill, we are turning that into waste,” said Torres. “I understood that glass could be infinitely recycled, and without losing its grade, and it’s a material that we need very much.”
So Torres offered his customers another service.
In addition to the organic waste that was already being picked up for composting, customers could also get additional bins to collect all their glass – bottles, jars and containers – that can be turned back into sand, in just seconds.
“And this can be infinite, this can be used any number of ways,” Torres said. “From repairing highways, for making more bottles, for emergency mitigation. You can use it as sandbags.”
As a matter of fact, sand is the second most used natural resource by humankind, after water.
“Everywhere that you see a highway, that you see a building, that you see a construction, there is a lot of sand,” said Torres.
The problem is that globally, we’re extracting 50 billion tons of sand from the earth and the sea each year.
That’s not sustainable, so why not reclaim it from all that glass we’re just throwing away?
“We’re guaranteeing that every single bottle that you put in our containers is going to be recycled,” Torres said. “It will have a second life.”
Torres just collects the glass.
He then transports it to Sibelco in Sarasota, a huge glass recycling facility that can process it at scale, at the rate of 50 tons per hour. That’s 10,000 tons of material each month.
“So we, as a community movement, we’re taking action, we’re leading by example, and we’re welcoming properties, hotels, community members to participate and become part of the solution,” said Torres.
Those hotels include Mr. C in Miami’s Coconut Grove neighborhood.
Mr. C. was Glass for Life’s first customer. Over the past two years, the hotel has diverted more than 20 tons of glass.
At The Palms Hotel in Miami Beach, sustainability is part of their corporate DNA.
“It’s just the right thing to do,” said Tanja Morariu, the hotel’s director of marketing and head of sustainability. “We need to protect this wonderful place that we live in, and if we don’t do our part, who’s going to protect it?”
Compost for Life and Glass for Life track the amount of materials their clients divert from landfills.
For The Palms, that’s 4,000 glass bottles in just four months.
“They’re doing something with it, and that makes a big difference,” said Morariu.
And conscious homeowners are also loving the service.
“It feels amazing,” said Glass for Life customer Alessandra Calderin. “Every little piece of anything that we can keep out of the landfill is so important to me.”
Added Torres: “This needs to be part of our day-to-day life. We are in an emergency. We are in the moment of truth that we need to take the right decisions today.”
In the past two years, Glass for Fife has already diverted 400 tons of glass bottles from going to landfill.
As we close out Plastic Free July, remember, we can choose to buy products that come packaged in more sustainable materials like aluminum and glass that can have infinite lives, instead of mindlessly adding to the plastic waste crisis that’s suffocating our planet and ocean.
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