Broward's Garbage Deal Actually Happened

By Siam Sukkhee Trading Co., Ltd — 2026-09-01 — Waste360 (recycling/scrap)

Late August in Florida. Nobody's paying attention to local government meetings.

That's when 26 cities and Broward County quietly approved the Facilities Amendment. Which means the Master Plan moves forward. Which means something that's been stuck in committee for years actually gets to walk out the door.

Here's the shape of it. The Solid Waste Authority of Broward County's Solid Waste Management and Recycling Master Plan will move forward now that 26 member cities and the County have approved the Facilities Amendment. In Broward County more than five million tons of trash is generated each year, about 20,000 pounds every minute, and the landfill and waste-to-energy facility are almost maxed out.

That's a problem with teeth.

You can't just build another landfill the way you can build another road. The permits take years. The land costs money. The neighbours don't want it. So the county's been watching its capacity shrink for a decade while 29 separate entities—cities and the county itself—each negotiated their own waste contracts separately. Which meant weak bargaining power. Which meant higher costs. Which meant they kept burning garbage in incinerators and burying it in holes that were almost full.

Actually, let me correct that. They weren't just watching. In 2023, Broward County and 28 cities got tired enough to create the Solid Waste Authority together. The agreement said: we'll develop one coordinated plan. One master plan that covers the next 40 years. The approval set in motion a 120-day window for the SWA's 28 member municipalities and Broward County to vote "Yes" to put the Master Plan into action. The Board approved it in April 2026. Now, finally, in August, enough cities had voted that the thing could move from theory into actual implementation.

The math is simple.

When you combine the buying power of 29 entities, you get leverage. By working together, municipalities will gain stronger bargaining power, "most favored nation" pricing, and long-term cost stability. You can negotiate contracts based on five million tons of trash a year instead of 100,000 tons at a time. You can demand recycling capacity improvements. You can actually move waste away from landfills and incinerators.

The plan itself isn't fancy. The Master Plan charts a course to negotiate better pricing by combining trash tonnage, expanding and increasing recycling, recovering valuable items from the waste stream that could be reused locally and beneficially, and significantly decreasing dependence on landfilling and waste-to-energy through waste reduction, diversion, and reuse. No magic. Just coordination.

But here's what makes it interesting: for something this coordinated to work, 26 separate political entities had to agree. Twenty-six different mayors, different councils, different constituents with different complaints. And they did. Not all 28—they didn't hit that threshold. But they hit 80 percent of the population. Which meant that legally, momentum had crossed over from "minority consent" to "legitimate mandate." The thing gets to move.

Together, the SWA members will begin implementing the Master Plan to divert valuable waste from the in-County landfill and waste-to-energy facility while achieving the best possible long-term stable costs for residents and businesses.

Now the renegotiation starts.

Source: "The Solid Waste Authority of Broward County's Solid Waste Management and Recycling Master Plan will move forward now that 26 member cities and the County have approved the Facilities Amendment." — PRNewswire

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