Plantation HOA and Condo Trash Cleaning: Blue Bags, Carts and Trash Rooms

Garbage collection in Plantation, Florida runs on a Pay As You Throw system: residents buy official blue City bags at stores such as Publix, Winn-Dixie and Walmart, and the bag price plus the monthly utility bill pays for garbage, bulk and recycling service. The City of Plantation says it is the only city in Broward County using this program.

The rest of the system, as the city publishes it on its solid waste disposal page:

• The hauler. Waste Management (WM) collects, and replaces damaged carts where carts are used.
• The schedule. Garbage is collected twice a week, with no service on Sunday or Christmas Day. The city's interactive map gives each address its days.
• The set-out time. Garbage and recycling must be at the curb before 7:00 a.m. on collection day.
• The bags. A blue bag should weigh no more than 40 pounds.
• Recycling. Single-family homes, townhouses, duplexes and triplexes use the city's clear recycling bags, collected once a week, according to the city's recycling guidelines.

The city gives one reason for the system that matters here: no large trash bins are left at the curb, so streets look tidier once collection is done.

Only three areas of Plantation have the cart system, according to the City of Plantation: Hawks Landing, Melaleuca Isles and Plantation Acres. The city says Melaleuca Isles and Plantation Acres have it because of the more rural nature of those areas, and that Hawks Landing asked for carts when the neighbourhood was developed.

In those three communities the carts are lifted by the truck, and the city's rules say palm fronds must fit entirely inside the cart. A cart that takes fronds, wet yard waste and household garbage twice a week builds up residue the truck never removes.

In a blue-bag Plantation home, what needs cleaning is the can the bags sit in between collection days. Many households keep tied bags in their own trash can in the garage or a side yard until the morning they go to the curb, and that can catches every leak, torn bag and drip in the meantime.

A bag-only system moves the dirty container out of sight; it does not remove it. Three things make those cans foul quickly in South Florida:

1. 01Leaks. A bag with wet kitchen waste or a split seam drains into the bottom of the can, and the liquid stays there.
2. 02Shade. A can kept in a garage or under Plantation's tree canopy never dries in the sun, so each week's residue lands on a surface still damp from the last.
3. 03Heat. A closed can in a hot garage is warm and damp all day, which is when smells and flies start.

Nobody collects or washes the can itself, and the same goes for the bin that holds the clear recycling bags.

Yes. A Plantation homeowners', townhouse or condo association can contract The BinFather for the whole community, so every home's carts or storage cans are cleaned on the same schedule. We work at the curb on the community's collection day, once the garbage has been collected, and residents do not need to be home.

1. 01One agreement, one invoice. The price is set for the whole community and billed to the association, not to each owner. Commercial work starts at $99, and the price changes with how many carts and containers there are and how often they are cleaned.
2. 02One route day. Homes in the same community share collection days on the city's map, so a neighbourhood is done in one visit rather than house by house.
3. 03Nothing drawn from the property. We bring our own heated water. The dirty water goes into a collection tank on our truck or trailer — nothing is left on your property.

Owners in a community without a contract can book their own cans on our household plans, listed on the pricing page: $30 a visit for two bins on the monthly plan, a one-year plan paid $30 a month or $324 up front (10% off the $360), or $65 for a one-time clean. Our Plantation page covers individual homes.

Plantation condo and apartment buildings that use dumpsters or a trash room are cleaned as commercial sites: the room, the containers and the pad they stand on, on a schedule the association or property manager sets. The city's bag rules are written for houses, townhouses, duplexes and triplexes; multi-family buildings use containers on site.

We clean the room, the containers and the pad. The chute shaft and the compactor are specialist work and stay outside what we do. Our commercial and HOA cleaning service covers how the work is scoped.

A Plantation board should first check whether its community uses blue bags, carts or on-site containers, then its governing documents, its container count and its collection days. Those answers decide what gets cleaned, what it costs and which day the visit falls on.

1. 01Bags, carts or containers. Hawks Landing, Melaleuca Isles and Plantation Acres use carts; most other single-family and townhouse communities use blue bags and residents' own cans; condo and apartment buildings use on-site containers.
2. 02The governing documents. Search the declaration for "refuse", "receptacle" and "common expense". Our guide to HOA trash bin rules in Florida covers the usual wording.
3. 03The count. How many homes, carts, cans or containers there are is what the price is built on.
4. 04The collection days. Check the city's interactive map for the community's addresses.