Stop Burning in Broward County: How Band-Aiding Our Waste Management Crisis with Incineration in South Florida Isn’t Working
Did you know that Florida is the state that incinerates more of its trash than any other U.S. state?
Well, it is. (Source: Energy Information Administration Form 923 Data)
Incineration just means burning trash, which, as you can imagine, is harmful to both the communities they’re in and the environment.
To the north of Broward County is Palm Beach County, a county that established a Solid Waste Authority about 50 years ago and now proudly claims to have a 90% recycling rate.
How are they able to achieve this recycling rate? It’s because in the State of Florida, you are legally allowed to call incineration recycling.
Yes, you read that correctly: in Florida, municipalities and even counties can legally say burning trash is recycling.
So Palm Beach County can make themselves look good, like they’re keeping all their trash confined to their county and recycling 90% of it, when they’re really burning it.
Greenwashing at its worst.
Greenwashing is when corporations, typically, but governments as well, claim that something they’re doing is helping the environment or protecting it in some way to garner the attention of those who care about the environment, when it's not necessarily true.
It’s a predatory, yet common, practice nowadays, but really, it’s just blatant lying with a “green”-PR twist.
Now, for the past few years, Broward has been trying to establish its own Solid Waste Authority - I’ll get into what that’s about later on.
First, let’s talk about how the waste is currently being managed in the tri-county area in South Florida.
Current Waste Management Practices in South Florida
Miami-Dade’s incinerator, located in Doral, burned down in a three-week-long fire in 2023.
You might be asking, how does an incinerator, a facility that burns trash, burn down? It’s actually more common than you think, as fires are a major risk of incineration.
That being said, since their incinerator burned down, Miami-Dade County has been hauling its trash to the Okeechobee Landfill via Fort Pierce rail yard and by truck to the J.E.D. Landfill in St. Cloud.
Thankfully, County Mayor Daniella Levine-Cava has already made a declaration that Miami-Dade County will not be utilizing incineration moving forward.
Conversely, two counties north in Palm Beach County, as mentioned above, fully leaned into incineration, having built a $672 million facility in West Palm Beach off Jog Road in 2015.
What’s wild about billion-dollar incinerators, to me personally, besides the fact they’re called “Waste-to-Energy” facilities, an obvious greenwashing campaign, is the fact that these facilities can only operate effectively for about 40 years.
In other words, these “Waste-to-Energy” plants are only able to run for a maximum of 40-50 years before they need to be decommissioned and a new (now) Billion-dollar plus incinerator needs to be built.
New incinerator proposals in Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties have been estimated at $1.5 to $2.3 billion.
Those dollars for “Waste-to-Energy” plants come from people like you and me, the taxpayers, of course!
Now in 2026, Palm Beach County Commissioners, who are also the PBC Solid Waste Authority Commissioners, could be approving a new $1.5 billion project to build another burner at the same site in West Palm Beach.
Did you know that composting businesses are banned in Palm Beach County (PBC)? PBC owns the trash from their residents and commercial businesses, including their organic material, which is actually an important part in cooling down incinerators (PBC SWA).
Additionally, their compostable materials add needed tonnage to make the incinerator make financial sense.
When you invest in these billion-dollar facilities, you have to use them to their maximum potential.
Which is ultimately why composting businesses are banned in a county that primarily burns all its waste.
This all brings me to look at Broward County’s current waste management practices.
Broward both incinerates and landfills their waste.
However, the recent history is that Broward used to have two incinerators operating in the county: one in South Broward and one in North Broward.
The North Broward location has now been torn down, but the South Broward location is still operating.
Right now, Broward County is weighing the idea of a Solid Waste Authority for the (my) county.
And all you have to do is look to our neighbors to the north to know how that could go.
Potential Solid Waste Authority in Broward County
To establish the Broward County Solid Waste Authority, cities representing at least 80% of the population in Broward must agree to sign on.
The agreement creates a Solid Waste Authority that member municipalities would be required to feed tax dollars and their waste streams to for 40-to-60 years, which would contract with private companies to get a good price for using facilities such as the South Broward incinerator, landfills, and WM’s new MRF (material recovery facility… a.k.a. a recycling sorting center).
Signing on the county for a 40-to-60-year plan that aggregates millions of tons of waste into a single-flow stream in a county that produces 20,000 pounds of trash per minute is a sign that this plan is intended to extend and expand incineration in Broward County.
While the Broward Solid Waste Authority Board may argue otherwise, explicit language has been requested to be added to the plan that would prevent further incineration, and that has not been added as of this publication on July 9, 2026.In fact, when you read the Broward County Solid Waste Authority master plan for yourself, at the bottom of the first table, just above the header “EDUCATION AND OUTREACH AND COMMUNICATION PLAN”, you will find the following:
“Consider initiating and defining the scope for an evaluation of the South Broward RRF Campus and adjacent properties in order to explore the feasibility of expanding WTE capacity at the Campus.”
WTE stands for Waste-to-Energy, a.k.a. incineration, and it’s right there in the plan: explore the feasibility of expanding the South Broward RRF Campus.
“RRF” stands for Resource Recovery Facility, another euphemism for incineration, even though they really destroy resources, not recover them.
If Broward County municipalities were to approve the Solid Waste Authority and thus approve the possibility of extending and expanding the use of incineration, it would be harmful to their residents’ health, the environment’s health and would be financially risky for taxpayers.
Incineration is Worse Than Landfilling
(Source: EnergyJustice.net)
Incineration is by far worse than landfilling by a few metrics. The following information has been sourced from EnergyJustice.net at times as direct quotes and other times as references.
On toxic emissions, nitrogen oxides, smog, acid gases, and particulate matter emissions, it’s rather obvious.
Incinerators turn 70% of the tonnage into air emissions, only some of which can be captured or reduced through air pollution control devices.
Most of this pollution is a product of combustion that would not be generated at landfills. The sheer volume of material being emitted through the smokestack leads to this outcome.
Beyond the combustion, there’s the resulting ash, a toxic product after burning tons and tons of mixed waste.
Toxic materials already present in products, such as toxic metals in inks or electronics, are largely trapped in the product and stay stored in the landfill long-term.
When incinerated, those toxic metals are immediately freed and released in a form that is more available for people to eventually breathe in or drink. What does not end up ejected into the air becomes part of the ash.
Ash can easily enter communities during shipping, when placed on landfills as landfill cover, and when “recycled” to make internal roads in landfills.
Now consider leachate, in this case, when toxins leach into groundwater from the ash. A good example is to think of coffee beans versus coffee grounds. Pour water over beans, and you won’t get coffee, but grind them up and increase their surface area, pour water over them, and you get coffee.
Ash is similar in that its higher surface area (fine particle matter) means more toxic chemicals can leach out, polluting groundwater.
And the communities that typically live around an incinerator in South Florida? In West Palm Beach AND in Broward, its elderly, as well as Black and brown populations.
This is as much an environmental justice issue as it is a matter of public health and environmental health.
What about methane and global warming/climate change? Aren’t landfills worse for the climate?
According to the EPA, about half (47.3%) of the carbon in municipal solid waste is from plastics and tires (Source: U.S. EPA Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) 2012 Technical Support Document, Table 3-2).
In a landfill, this carbon is sequestered, but when burned, it’s immediately injected into the atmosphere.
No carbon capture and sequestration is viable or used with trash incinerators.
To top it off, incinerators are way more expensive than landfills.
From EnergyJustice.net:
The incinerator industry admits that incineration is more expensive than landfilling (Source).
This is true in nearly every local instance Energy Justice has seen, with rare exceptions. Here are some of the admissions by the industry:
Most recently, the industry has admitted that incineration “is considerably more costly than the alternative of landfill disposal” and that a “principal reason for the cost disparity noted above is the considerable expense” of air pollution controls.
Source: Aug 30, 2019 Amicus curiae filing by the “Local Government Coalition for Renewable Energy,” an unincorporated and informal group of 11 local governments that host 13 trash incinerators, 10 of which are privately operated (all by Covanta, the nation’s largest incinerator corporation) in the lawsuit over the Baltimore Clean Air Act, in their effort to interfere with Baltimore City’s right to adopt a local clean air law that could force the closure of two waste incinerators in their city.
Energy Justice’s comparison of the local contract prices in 2019 for incineration vs. landfilling in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania finds that the average incinerator contract in 2019 is $64.43/ton while the average landfill contract is $47.86/ton. See Energy Justice's Montgomery County, PA page.
Two national waste industry trade associations also admit this:
“Waste-to-energy is an additional capital cost. That is not in dispute, compared to a landfill… compared to a landfill, which is a less capital-intense structure – it is more expensive. If you had a landfill next to a waste-to-energy facility, then almost in every case, you would think the landfill is going to be cheaper.”
-Ted Michaels, President, Energy Recovery Council (the trash incinerator industry’s trade association), March 18, 2013 testimony before Washington, DC City Council (see video at 1:44)
Incineration clearly has some kind of monetary incentive for someone, but it’s not the folks in the areas these incinerators are in.
Allow me to address incineration lobby groups in another blog post.
To recap why incinerators are worse than landfills:
Burning trash releases combustion fumes that are detrimental to the environment and surrounding communities
Toxic ash is produced that is usually landfilled, impacting the surrounding environment and health of surrounding communities
Landfills sequester carbon while incinerators release it into the atmosphere
Incinerators cost more to build, operate, and maintain
Incinerators need to be fed a consistent amount of waste to be economical, but landfills can be filled more slowly as we reduce waste, making them last longer
Typically, landfills are stationed in more rural areas, away from urban populations, whereas incinerators are generally in more urban areas
I know this is a lot, but there are better options available to us if we demand them.
Zero Waste Future for South Florida
We will not be able to recycle or burn our way into a zero waste future.
It will take the implementation of programs that are a fraction of the cost of incineration and actually serve the community, but will require education and re-education to set us up for a better future.
Zero waste programs like community composting, which would cut down on landfill waste by 40%, reducing excessive methane emissions, and recirculating existing nutrients that took resources to create.
Along with resident-wide, large-scale composting, waste management programs like “Pay As You Throw,” where residents have prepaid bags for landfilling, help reduce landfill burden.
This type of program, also known as Save As You Throw, etc., has already been successfully implemented in thousands of communities across the U.S., according to the EPA.
Actually, nine communities in Florida use this structure, one of them is Plantation, FL, here in South Florida.
Before you get riled up, remember, you already pay for your trash as a utility, this would restructure the utility, and you could end up paying less, depending on how little you waste.
Low-income folks can get government subsidies in the form of extra bags.
Case studies show that within 1-2 months of implementing the “Pay-As-You-Throw” waste structure, waste is reduced by 44% on average.
About half of this waste reduction is not just materials going into recycling and composting bins, but is a 20% reduction in materials needing to be picked up because people are reducing and reusing more, paying attention to packaging when they shop, and donating reusables more, saving time, fuel costs, and landfill burden.
Studies comparing landfilling and incineration to zero waste approaches have found, not surprisingly, that avoided production (reduction and reuse), recycling, and composting are better for the climate than burning or burying materials, and that anything else that doesn’t fit in those categories is best handled with a material recovery and biological treatment (MRBT) process before landfilling.
Material recovery means mechanically removing extra recyclables that are still discarded.
Landfills don’t have to be as harmful as they currently are. We could use techniques like biological treatment, which means stabilizing any residual organic material with an anaerobic digestion process so that any gas generation is done in an enclosed system where gases can be easily captured, avoiding having a gassy, stinky landfill.
There’s a whole Zero Waste Hierarchy we could be employing, we just have to demand it as constituents.
Bringing zero waste strategies to South Florida will improve our waste problem at the root, create a healthier environment and communities, save money for taxpayers, and create jobs at a time when we seriously need new ones.
Is that the kind of future you envision for South Florida?
