FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Miami-Dade County produces more trash than nearly anywhere else in the nation. Each year, residents and businesses generate about 5 million tons of garbage — double the national average.

“We have a landfill crisis. We’re running out of space for our trash,” said Yadira Diaz, founder and chief impact officer of Gradible.

“I wanted to kind of grade businesses on their sustainability because, as a young person in Miami, I’m going to festivals and hotels and just seeing that everything’s backwards,” Diaz said.

Many South Florida hospitality businesses would earn an “F” for sustainability, she said. They don’t compost, still offer single-use plastic items and fail to recycle.

“The trash bins are overflowing,” Diaz said. “And obviously that’s an issue when it rains — anything that’s on the ground will flow into the drain and go into the bay. But yeah, you just see it everywhere.”

From San Diego to Miami, Diaz refined her idea. Instead of simply grading businesses on sustainability, why not connect them with companies offering green solutions? That’s why she launched Gradible in 2023.

“We’re a one-stop shop,” Diaz said. “When we engage with businesses that want to be more sustainable, we have a marketplace — a portfolio of companies that have solutions for them to implement.”

Gradible now partners with more than 250 businesses offering sustainable products, services and technologies, including Compost for Life and Glass for Life.

“These are very critical times,” said Francisco Torres of Compost for Life and Glass for Life. “We’re facing a lot of problems with our environment and our planet.”

Gradible’s goal is to connect sustainable companies with local businesses that want to make environmentally conscious changes — such as Downtown Café and Madda’s Place.

“I was raised in a different way,” said Madda’s Place owner Maddalena Polite. “In Switzerland, we have to take the paper off a can and separate the paper from the metal and the plastic — we have to recycle everything.”

Polite wanted to go greener, so Diaz introduced a business model inspired by one in Seattle: reusable coffee cups instead of disposable ones lined with plastic.

“Your customers are going to love it,” Diaz said. “It’s a program where, when I get to the coffee counter, I have the option of either getting a single-use cup or joining a great loyalty program that uses reusables. I’m doing good for the environment.”

Here’s how it works: Customers order coffee in a reusable cup. On their next visit, they return the same cup for their new order. Businesses encourage participation by offering perks.

“We’re going to give our customers the 10th coffee for free,” Polite said.

“This was a great starting point because it was the easiest, best use we could find to really engage,” said MJ Green, chief of economic development for the Miami Downtown Development Authority.

The DDA is helping Diaz expand the program to other coffee shops and restaurants. Each participating business can receive a $1,000 rebate for joining.

“We really want to make this happen,” Green said. “There are many people who would like to use a reusable coffee cup to impact the environment, even in a small way every day.”

So far, two other downtown businesses — The Bagel Club and Naughty Coffee — have joined. The goal is to scale the program citywide so customers can get and return reusable cups at any participating business.

An app tracks each cup used and returned.

“I knew that was going to be a great start because then they tell their friends, ‘Hey, I just joined this program. I get a free coffee here and there,’ and that helps — especially when it’s expensive here,” Diaz said.

Diaz said in a disposable world facing a growing trash and plastic crisis, rethinking waste just makes sense.

“When you reduce waste, energy and water, you reduce expenses,” she said. “You have to pay for trash pickup, but if you’re zero waste, you don’t have that waste management bill anymore.”

“People don’t want to trash our treasure,” Green said. “We are here because of the treasure South Florida provides us.”

The coffee cup program is just one example of Gradible’s work to help businesses meet sustainability goals and tackle the waste crisis head-on.

Gradible is also partnering with the Elser Hotel and the Mayfair House to implement additional green initiatives — including composting, recycling and replacing single-use plastic products with biodegradable alternatives.

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