Educational award granted to Miami-Dade County

The Miami-Dade County Department of Solid Waste Management (DSWM) recently won the 2011 Achievement Award from the National Association of Counties (NACo). The award was won by DSWM for its Ongoing Curbside Recycling Education Campaign.

The DSWM began to transition from its old dual-stream recycling program to the new, streamlined, single-stream program in June 2008. The transition was completed by the end of 2008. In the first fiscal year of the new recycling program, the DSWM collected nearly double the tonnage of recyclable materials as it had done the last fiscal year of the old program (31,778 tons in FY 2007-08 versus 59,616 in FY 2008-09). In FY 2009-10, Miami-Dade curbside recycling customers recycled 60,808 tons of glass, plastic, aluminum, steel and paper.

The DSWM’s curbside recycling education program involves several components and is done in three languages – English, Spanish and Creole. Print and electronic advertisements, campaign literature, news articles, presentations, e-mail alerts, educational videos and the internet are all some of the tools used to educate and inform residents about the DSWM’s single-stream recycling program.

The DSWM provides curbside recycling service to 348,000 single family households in the unincorporated areas of Miami-Dade County as well as all residences in 21 participating municipalities.