MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. — National Recycling Day was observed on Saturday as the push to get people to recycle correctly grows more urgent by the day. Recycling can be confusing, and many are doing it wrong — leading to high contamination rates and increased costs for cities to absorb.

However, a brand new tool aims to help clear the confusion.

“It allows me to reach a wider audience and educate them on the issue of marine trash,” said environmentalist Andrew Otazo.

South Florida eco-hero Otazo made national headlines, gracing the pages of The Washington Post after reaching a giant milestone.

“To date I have removed 36,750 pounds of trash,” said Otazo.

Otazo has been on a mission to clean up all the marine debris smothering the mangroves of Virginia Key and Bear Cut since 2017.

It’s a difficult task: The more he picks up, the more trash he finds. That doesn’t deter Otazo, as that motivates him to do more and raise awareness about the impact it has on the natural world.

“I was out on the mangroves yesterday, and I picked up, I think it was 320 pounds of trash, and the vast majority of that was recyclable,” said Otazo. “It was plastic bottles, it was aluminum cans, it was glass bottles. It was all this material that had just accumulated because it hadn’t been disposed of correctly.”

Miami-Dade County has one of the lowest recycle rates in Florida. A FDEP report from 2020 shows that only 19.3% of Miami-Dade’s waste is recycled.

This comes at a time where landfill is quickly running out of space and the county is in crisis mode trying to figure out what to do with the five million tons of waste Miami-Dade generates annually.

“We need to get to that zero waste future,” said Otazo. “It is so important that we get it right.”

A new resource, Recycle-pedia, hopes to help.

“Recycle-pedia is a website that tries to make recycling as easy as possible,” said Barbara Martinez-Guerrero, executive director of the eco-nonprofit Dream in Green, which launched the tool.

The website lets users enter their location anywhere within Miami-Dade County and see exactly what items belong in their recycling bin, what must be dropped off at special locations and what goes to the landfill.

“The idea is that you can go on your computer or on your phone, and depending on where you are in Miami and all of the county, decide what goes correctly into your recycling bin and what should be dropped off somewhere and what goes into the landfill,” said Martinez-Guerrero.

Because Miami-Dade’s 34 municipalities follow different recycling rules, the tool eliminates guesswork. Users can also search by item.

“So for example, if I wanted to find out what is recyclable in city of Miami, here is a quick show with pictures of basically what you should and shouldn’t put in your recycling bin,” said Martinez-Guerrero. “Super easy. Super easy.”

The tool also allows users to search specific items. When asked to check aluminum foil in El Portal, Martinez-Guerrero demonstrated: “Let’s check… aluminum foil is not recyclable.”

Recycle-pedia also provides guidance for items that cannot go into a curbside bin.

“And then if you have, for example, an item that it says you shouldn’t recycle, right, like paint cans or aerosol cans, you would go to a specialty item,” she said. “And here you can find drop off locations for these items.”

Reducing contamination, Martinez-Guerrero emphasized, is crucial.

“Ultimately it’s the taxpayers that pay for these contamination rates. We’re putting the wrong thing in the recycling bin, and it has to go through. We pay for that,” she said.

Many South Florida cities have scaled back or abandoned recycling due to high costs, but environmental leaders warn that the region cannot afford to step back now.

“We have this massive amount of garbage that we don’t know what to do with,” Martinez-Guerrero said. “Our landfills are at capacity xxx our landfills emit various greenhouse gasses that ultimately warm our planet.”

“What we want to do is make sure that we recycle correctly, so it goes into the recycling facilities and it doesn’t get thrown out into our landfill,” she added.

Otazo says Recycle-pedia could help residents take an important step.

“So if you want to get closer to that zero waste, future, Recycle-pedia is an excellent tool to get you there,” he said.

Officials urge residents not to “wish-cycle” — the practice of tossing nonrecyclable items into the bin in hopes they will be recycled.

When in doubt, they advise, throw it out.

More information is available at the Recycle-pedia website.

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