Coral Gables and Cardboard

It might sound strange, but one of the things that I really like about living in Coral Gables is the trash collection service. Rather than having to haul our trash bins to the street, people who live in most of the Gables are truly spoiled in that the city’s sanitation and recycling workers take handcarts to the side of our homes and collect our waste from there – that saves any arguments about who was supposed to have taken out the trash but forgot! Another perk is that our bulk trash is removed from the swale weekly: each home is allotted 1 cubic yard of bulky trash removal every week, which is about the size of a dishwasher. This is great for yard waste, small pieces of furniture, and other such items that can be tricky to dispose of.

Speaking of that bulk trash removal, just this week a Gables Code Enforcement officer knocked on my front door and handed me a flyer indicating that bulk trash pickup will no longer include removal of cardboard boxes. Instead, residents are asked to break down their cardboard boxes and put them out with their recyclables. I did not think to ask the officer when he stopped by my house, but I have to imagine that this is due to the extreme amount of deliveries that have been made throughout the pandemic. When we could not go out to shop, Amazon brought everything to us, and the easiest thing has been to toss those often-oversized boxes onto the swale for bulk collection. I know that I have done so myself a time or two! I think that putting the onus on residents to recycle those boxes will save room on the City’s waste removal trucks and it will certainly be better for the environment if we recycle these huge amounts of cardboard.

If you live in Coral Gables, be sure to recycle your cardboard boxes moving forward. Or, better yet, shop at the many small, locally-owned boutiques that have reopened!