Trash bin cleaning in Miramar

Miramar runs east to west across most of southern Broward, and the two ends of the city have almost nothing in common. Historic Miramar, at the eastern end, is 1950s and 1960s housing on compact lots — small side yards, mature landscaping, carts stored close to the house. West of Flamingo Road, communities like Silver Lakes, Sunset Lakes, Riviera Isles and Monarch Lakes are 1990s-and-later master-planned neighborhoods with HOA covenants that generally require carts to be stored out of view and returned promptly.

That HOA layer changes the job. In these communities a cart usually lives in the garage or a screened side enclosure, which solves the visual problem and creates a different one: an enclosed, unventilated space where the smell has nowhere to go, and where a leaking cart puts residue on a garage floor rather than on grass. Homeowners here rarely call because the bin looks bad from the street. They call because the garage smells.

The far western edge of Miramar backs onto conservation land and canal systems, which means the local wildlife takes an active interest in an unsecured, sweet-smelling cart. Raccoons and opossums work a bin that smells like food; they ignore one that does not.