Trash bin cleaning in Sunny Isles Beach

Sunny Isles Beach sits on a barrier island barely wide enough for Collins Avenue and the towers lining it. Nowhere in the city is more than a few hundred metres from salt water, and that has two consequences for anything made of plastic and metal left outside. Salt-laden air deposits a film that attracts and holds moisture, so a container here effectively never dries; and it attacks hinge pins, axles and lid hardware, which is why bins on this strip age visibly faster than identical ones a few miles west.

Most of the city's waste moves through building chute systems rather than curbside collection. The ground-floor rooms those chutes empty into are enclosed, warm and in constant use, and cleaning contracts for the buildings rarely cover the inside of the carts or the chute opening itself. That is where the smell in a lobby corridor usually originates.

Golden Shores, on the west side of Collins, is the exception — single-family homes with ordinary curbside carts on compact lots. Those have the standard South Florida problem, plus the salt.