Miami-Dade has been slow to catch up with other states and other Florida communities in embracing large-scale composting. While landfills have continued to fill up, there hasn’t been a clear path in the county code for community composters to legally operate.

That just changed. Last week, county commissioners passed new legislation making it easier and cheaper for community composters to turn food scraps and other organic waste into what’s known to gardeners as “black gold.”

“We’re going to run out of landfill space in the next couple of years,” said Commissioner Eileen Higgins, who championed the legislation. “So I’m imagining this can divert in the next two to three years 30,000 tons from the landfill that would be producing methane instead of producing soil that can be used by our agr

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