Dumpster Rental in Surfside, FL

Waste, Enviroment, Surfside and the Surf Club

On the beautiful, sub-tropical southeast coast of Florida, the City of Surfside sits happily on the exotic Atlantic coast in Miami-Dade County. The city began as an exclusive club that business mogul Harvey Firestone opened in 1930. The Surf Club received glamorous guests such as Frank Sinatra, Elizabeth Taylor, Dean Martin, and even Winston Churchill. The City of Surfside grew out of these dazzling gatherings, which was incorporated in 1935 with just thirty-five people but has since grown to become an ideal and sought-after place to live.

Environmental Initiatives in Surfside

Surfside offers a pristine community by the water that benefits from Florida’s subtropical environment, which has attracted visitors and residents from around the country and the world since the 1930s. It is no wonder that in Surfside’s environmental protection is high-valued. Accordingly, the City supports many “green” initiatives.

One such area is landscaping. We often think of landscaping as separate from the “environment,” which exists in parks, wetlands, and beaches. But the City of Surfside contends that every homeowner’s landscaping is part of the environment. As such, lawn care can be an important component of environmental protection. As such, the City supports nine landscaping guidelines to support the environment.

• Select plants that require minimal water and fertilizer and pesticides to reduce water usage and runoff and that may also provide food for wildlife.
• Many homes overwater their grass and plants. Therefore, the City supports minimal irrigation practices that only water lawns and plants when need water.
• Fertilize lawns with a mind to pollution by following UF/IFAS recommendations for appropriate amounts and formulas, choosing slow-release fertilizer and pesticides, keeping fertilizer off of hard surfaces where they eventually drain into the wastewater system and minimizing overall usage of chemicals.
• Maintain about three inches of much on lawns to retain moisture and nutrients for the grass and naturally combat weeds and erosion.
• Minimize your yards runoff by doing things like directing downspout to porous areas (e.g. gardens or planted areas) that will soak up and drink the water.
• Waterfront property should be specially maintained to avoid erosion with seawalls and ripraps or by growing vegetation by waterways to reduce runoff.

Waste Collection Centers

If you are considering a large project, from a spring-cleaning to landscaping to larger renovations or construction jobs, consider a rollaway dumpster. Some people also use dumpsters to quickly clean after a wedding or large event. But if you have additional waste disposal needs, Miami-Dade County offers Surfside residents several facilitate to bring trash and recycling.

• North Dale Landfill receives bulk trash for a fee and is located at 21500 NW 47th Avenue in Miami.
• South Dade Landfill accepts bulk trash and can be found at 23707 SW 97th Avenue in Homestead.

Also, dumpster containers cannot be used for hazardous waste, which will have to be disposed of separately through a collection center. As follows are the County’s Collection Centers:

• The West Dade Home Chemical Collection Center located at 8801 NW 58th Street in Doral.
• The South Dade Home Chemical Collection Center located at 23707 SW 97th Street Avenue in Homestead (enter through Gate B).

Landfills in Florida and the Problem of Plastic

The production of plastic has increased over the past sixty-five years, from about forty billion tons in 1956 to about three hundred and thirty-five metric tons per year in 2016, by some estimates. Most plastics take more than four hundred years to degrade, and as much as ninety percent goes to landfills.

Although Surfside and Miami-Dade County seek to recycle and minimize plastics the go into the earth, the challenge is daunting.

Science may provide a partial answer to this problem over time. Some new scientific work attempts to promote the development of new chemicals that can be used to create plastics that are less harmful to the environment. For example, Megan L. Robertson (Associate Professor of chemical and Bimolecular Engineering) and Jeannette M. Garcia (IBM Almaden Research Center) are pursuing new methods creating and recycling plastics. The authors explain some new research that is developing a process of replacing hydrocarbon-based polymers with those made from vegetable oils or other plant-based materials that can be melted down to be reused more easily. These and other innovations could potentially lower the energy required to recycle. Other areas of research are designed to find substances (compatibilizers) that can break down diverse types of plastics together and reduce the need to sort plastics.