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🌎Today in how you can save the earth
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🌎Today in how you can save the earth

COMPOSTING 101

Next up in our rundown of ways to live a little more sustainably in the 305: composting.

It’s a great way to be kind to the earth, but Miami does not make it easy to do. Unlike many major cities, we don’t have any public composting facilities where you can take your scraps if you don’t want to compost at home.

We’re here to show you that it is possible. It may be worth it just because of how much less gross your kitchen trash is when you take out all the stuff that can decompose.

WHERE TO TAKE YOUR COMPOST SCRAPS

Although there are no public facilities, here are a couple spots where you can drop off your compost scraps to be turned into natural fertilizer that will grow pesticide-free plants, fruits, and veggies.

  • Miami Beach Botanical Garden (South Beach) – drop off Tuesday through Sunday, between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m.
  • Smart Bites Cafe (Allapattah) – drop off during normal operating hours
  • Earth ‘n’ Us Farm (Little River) – drop off during normal operating hours
  • Cerasee Farms (Liberty City) – drop off to the team Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. If they’re closed, there are bins where you can drop compost off.

Got more recommendations? Let us know. This is going to be a living resource on our website as well that we’ll keep updated with the latest info.

TOO BUSY FOR THAT?

Check out the Fertile Earth Foundation. They’ll drop off a bucket at your home that you can fill up with scraps (they recommend storing it in your fridge or freezer to keep the decomposition process from beginning).

On your pickup date, just leave it outside your front door and it will be replaced with a clean, empty bucket for you to fill up. Right now they pick up in Brickell, Little Havana, Miami Beach and neighboring areas. If you don’t live there but you work there, they can arrange office pick-up instead.

You can opt for weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly pickups, and each one costs $8. Most of it is taken to the Miami Beach Botanical Garden.

Read on for deets on what you can and can’t throw in your compost over on thenewtropic.com.

WHILE WE'RE ON THE TOPIC...

Last week we shared out tips on how to recycle in the 305. You came back with more questions and a bunch of helpful tips, including these:

Not all plastic containers are recyclable. Items made of #5 or #6 plastic can’t go in your recycling bin in Miami-Dade. How can you ID those? The recycling symbol has a little number inside of it that tells you. Some things commonly made of #5 plastic are plastic takeout containers, yogurt containers, plastic utensils, and hummus containers.  As for #6 plastic? That’s styrofoam, those little packing peanuts, and infamous Solo cups, to name a few.

But you can still recycle #5 plastics, thanks to the Gimme 5 recycling program, which will collect them at all kinds of retail locations, like Whole Foods. Go here to find one near you.  We were unable to track down any local recycling programs for #6 plastic. If anyone out there knows of one, please let us know and we’ll share that info out. (Thanks to Lina Castenada for the heads up on #5 and #6 plastic!)

Where can I take my recycling if my building doesn’t do it? Well, your building owner can be fined since recycling is required. So first off, call your waste management department to report that. Beyond that, you’ll probably have to prevail upon your friends and fam to let you drop your stuff in their bins. The public facilities are generally for recycling items like hazardous waste or bulky items that you can’t dump in residential bins.

Is glossy paper ok? Yep! (Thanks to @speclansauntie9 for the question!)

WHAT'S NEW IN THE 305

Equal opportunity destroyer. If you feel like you’ve been getting a whole lot of flat tires lately, it’s not just you. Our construction boom has left nails in roads over the county, and they’re ending up in everyone’s tires. (Miami Herald)

Leaky ship. The county commission just approved a plan for helping Turkey Point’s leaky cooling canals that could end up letting more polluted water into Biscayne Bay. Here’s what’s up: the nuclear reactors at the Turkey Point power plant are kept cool via a bunch of cooling canals. But rising water temperatures have sped up evaporation from those canals, leaving them increasingly salty and creating a layer of super dense water. A couple years ago that water sank to the bottom of the canal and began leaking into the Bay. Mayor Gimenez proposed using treated wastewater to desalinate the canals, and this week the county commission said OK  – even though it doesn’t meet the same water standards as the nearby Bay. And the leaky status of the canals means that treated wastewater could end up there. (Miami Herald)

SMH. Coral Gables finally approved ventanitas within their city limits… and the first “ventanita” is at a Starbucks near the Miracle Theatre. Hey, they used the quotation marks first. 🤷‍♀️(Miami.com)

Good riddance. Miami Beach is cracking down on all those Ocean Drive restaurants that prey on tourists, leaving them with massive checks at the end of their meals. The city now requires restaurants to display all their prices, including service charges, on menus at sidewalk tables. Violators will face major penalties and could even have their licenses revoked, like La Baguette did temporarily. With this era ending, we might even stop avoiding Ocean Drive. (Miami Herald)

Everything old is new again. ICYMI, Overtown’s got a lot going on once again – and we’re not talking about potential Amazon sites. New restaurants are coming in, the Overtown Performing Arts Center has opened its doors to all kinds of performances, and the neighborhood, once dubbed the Harlem of the south, is beginning to once again catch the attention of people other than its residents. Here’s why. (Indulge)

We’re #1! The richest zip code in the whole entire U.S. is right here in the 305. It’s 33109, the one that includes Fisher Island, the bougie AF island south of South Beach where the average income is $2.5 million *a year.* (The Real Deal)

Peace out, Irma. Hurricane Irma blew a whole lot of debris into our oceans, and much of it is still sitting in the ocean off the Florida Keys. There’s little personnel on hand to tackle the challenge of cleaning it all up, so local dive operators are now being trained to properly remove it. Details on how to get involved here. Speaking of Irma, you won’t hear that name from the National Weather Service ever again – it’s been officially retired as a storm name, as have Maria, Harvey, and Nate. (Miami Herald, WLRN)

AND YEA YEA, WE KNOW…

That papaya means something dirty in Cuban Spanish. Stop making us blush. 🙈 We’ll catch you Monday.

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