Jesse Scheckner
Miami-Dade could start examining whether short-term vacation rentals in the county produce more trash than their traditional residential counterparts — and whether they should be charged more for the difference.
But it’s easier said than done, according to a conversation this week about a now-advancing measure.
Members of the Infrastructure, Innovation and Technology Committee voted 3-0 for a resolution by Raquel Regalado that would direct Mayor Daniella Levine Cava’s administration to do the study.
At a minimum, county staff would have to compare the trash output for vacation rentals and non-vacation rentals and, based on the information collected, provide the County Commission recommendations for how to offset any disproportionate impacts.
But the county faces obstacles in getting the data. Most regulation for vacation rentals is preempted by the state. And while Miami-Dade has a list of more than 900 properties in the county used for vacation rental purposes, that list is incomplete, said Aneisha Daniel, Director of the Department of Solid Waste Management.
There’s also the issue of how the county would go about measuring the rubbish.
Daniel said the county’s current recycling contract, which became effective in April, mandates that its recycling collection trucks have AI capacity to detect when wrong items are placed into recycling containers for pickup. That will help Solid Waste to reduce contamination, identify which customers are incorrectly sorting their trash and recycling, issue them citations and “provide them with additional education materials so they can recycle right.”
But the county’s garbage collection vehicles don’t have that tech, making weighing and cross-referencing the trash they collect more difficult.
Daniel said the staff are researching alternative programs that use AI, including a pay-as-you-throw model that charges residents based on how much trash they throw out. Several local governments in other states have used the model to create an economic incentive to recycle.
Until then, Regalado said her measure would inform the county how best to proceed by using the AI data on recycling volumes to gauge how much waste is being produced, direct code enforcers to do the information-gathering, or collect the intel another way.
“We would have to decide what our next steps are,” she said.
The inspiration for the measure, Regalado said, came from a “deep dive into all things trash” that she began in recent years that included working to negotiate the county’s new recycling contract and launching recycling education and composing initiatives in her district.
Miami-Dade’s current one-size-fits-all approach to garbage collections isn’t fair, she said, and deserves updating.
“One of the things I think that is happening in this county that is improper is we charge everyone the same for trash irrespective of the size of their home or the amount of trash they are (producing),” she said. “We are changing that on the recycling side because I was able to add AI to that contract. And now the question is, as we start getting more sophisticated on the trash side, what are our options?”
Micky Steinberg, a former Miami Beach Commissioner who now represents the city as a member of the County Commission, said she’d like to see “all options” when it comes to tamping down on vacation rental-produced trash.
“Any time that I see anything … that says ‘vacation rental,’ I mean, we have so many issues in my district, specifically, and we get a lot of complaints. And this might end up being a solution that actually helps not just with our reduction of waste but also potentially on the behavior that comes along with some of these vacation rentals,” she said. “It’s really important to explore, but we also need to know … what is realistic and what is feasible.”
The resolution is scheduled for a vote by the full 13-member County Commission at its June 3 meeting.
