Miami Airport to Expand Recycling Program

The Miami International Airport (MIA) will begin an airportwide recycling program March 2014 following the signing of a recycling contract approved by the Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners. The countywide recycling agreement with Ecological Paper Recycling, Opa Locka, Fla., was signed Oct. 1, 2013. The contract expands the airport’s recycling program to include glass, plastic and metal containers; the airport already collects paper and old corrugated containers (OCC) for recycling.

 

The airport says it earned $117,265 in revenue in 2012 through its paper and OCC recycling program.

 

The Miami-Dade Aviation Department says it expects the airport’s recycling rate to increase from 6 percent, which it reached in 2012, to 20 percent by 2015. To accomplish this, the department will deploy 100 recycling containers at MIA’s North Terminal in March 2014 and add 500 more containers throughout the rest of the airport in May 2014.

 

“I greatly appreciate the County Commission for taking this step to drastically reduce MIA’s environmental footprint,” says Miami-Dade Aviation Director Emilio González. “The new recycling program will deliver a major customer service enhancement to our environmentally conscious passengers, add a significant component to our green efforts and generate nonaeronautical revenue that helps decrease our costs to the airlines. Everyone, and most importantly our environment, wins.”