On a recent visit, Samuel Martinez didn’t notice the hot pink compost bin at Charles Hadley Park in Liberty City until it was pointed out to him.
Then he saw the lock.
Martinez, a 32-year-old Little Haiti apartment resident, brings his two kids to the park every few weeks. The idea of creating a place to drop off household waste, such as banana peels or coffee grounds, makes sense to him. The need to require an access code just to open the lid does not.
“I’d rather not have to take 3-4 minutes for me to throw away the food scraps,” Martinez said. “If I feel that way, then I can assume others feel that way too.”
That tension is at the center of Miami’s new composting pilot.
The program, which was announced May 1 by new Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins and started the same day, aims to help residents reduce what ends up in the trash. It runs until July 31 and offers five drop-off locations – Miami City Hall, the Miami River Center (MRC), Charles Hadley Park, Morningside Park, and Shenandoah Park. The city says it plans to track participation levels, contamination rates, cost per ton and the amount of organic waste diverted from landfills.
The effort is run in partnership with Compost for Life, a Miami-based organization that collects food scraps and turns them into nutrient-rich soil for community gardens and local farms. The group has diverted more than 10 million pounds of organic waste from landfills since 2020.
Francisco Torres, Compost for Life’s founder, said the city pilot has collected 5,045 pounds of food scraps and has 179 participants so far.
But the program’s early use was not always visible on the ground.
On May 23, Caplin News visited all five sites between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. Four bins appeared empty or lightly used. The only one that had anything inside, at Morningside Park, contained food scraps.
Andrea Steevens, a customer experience team member at Compost for Life said Saturday morning pickups may explain why several bins appeared empty or lightly used when the sites were visited later that day.
“The padlocks are meant to prevent contamination,” Steevens said. Residents receive an automatic message with an access code after scanning the QR code and signing up online.
Shenandoah Park has seen the strongest participation so far, followed by Morningside Park and Charles Hadley Park. The MRC site has had the lowest participation, Steevens said.
The free drop-off bins address one challenge the organization hears about most often: cost, said Maria Muñoz, Compost for Life’s customer experience manager. She said people tell the group that they want to compost but often cannot afford its residential composting pickup service, which costs $32 a month for weekly pickup. The city’s pilot gives them a free drop-off option.
“Many residents told us they had always wanted to compost but didn’t know how to start or didn’t have access to a program before,” Muñoz said.
The pilot comes as Miami-Dade County continues searching for solutions to the region’s waste disposal issue. A 2023 fire shut down the county’s waste-to-energy plant in Doral.
Food waste is also a significant contributor to climate change, with the EPA estimating that approximately 58% of total fugitive methane released from municipal solid waste landfills comes from landfilled food waste.
Other cities have gone further. Boston offers free curbside food-waste collection for eligible residents, while New York collects food scraps through curbside composting and drop-off options. Miami’s pilot is smaller, testing the idea through five public drop-off bins.
In Shenandoah Park on a recent day, the brightest thing was the hot pink compost bin by the entrance marked with a sign telling visitors, “Yes, your banana peel matters!” But during the visit, no one was near it or parked in the spaces nearby.
Placement varies across the other four drop-off sites. Charles Hadley’s bin was near the parking lot. Morningside stands between the park building and the tennis courts. City Hall’s bin is placed outside the building, while the Miami River Center bin is hard to reach due to nearby construction.
Sedona Webb is a 26-year-old public health graduate student at Rutgers University who lives in South Miami and composts at home. She said she was excited to see Miami launch the pilot but believes the city still has to overcome a culture built around convenience.
“I think convenience is killing us,” Webb said. “People need to learn how to live a little more inconveniently to protect the planet.”
Webb said composting can fit into everyday life in Miami, but changing habits may require more than placing bins in public spaces.
“We all have to get used to doing the right thing without rewards,” Webb said.
Suramy Gomez, a Miami sustainability content creator, said many Miami residents favor sustainability “in theory,” but not always in practice. Gomez said composting will only become widespread if it gets out of niche environmental groups and into people’s daily routines.
“If we had a compost bin next to every trash bin, everyone, no matter how busy or where they lived, would compost without even thinking about it,” Gomez said.
The pilot has the bins, the partner, and the environmental reason to exist. What it does not have yet is proof that people will return with food scraps in hand and unlock the lid.
