In South Florida, this dangerous job could soon belong to drones

South Florida admin July 15, 2026 0 Comments

In South Florida, this dangerous job could soon belong to drones

The next time a highrise needs a good cleaning, it might not require a window cleaner outside hanging from scaffolding. Instead, it could be a whirring drone.

That is thanks to a new tech-forward cleaning initiative spearheaded by Goodwill South Florida.

While most associate the company with affordable thrift stores and donation drop-offs, the organization also has provided janitorial, landscaping, grounds maintenance and food preparation services since 1982. This new window washing service involves a drone equipped with tools to pressure-wash buildings up to 200 feet tall. Goodwill South Florida gave a demonstration on Wednesday of how their window washing drones work.

The drone, nicknamed Goodie, has multiple settings and can power wash at 4,000 psi. DeAndre Daniels, one of Goodie’s pilots, says the drone can turn a week-long dangerous cleaning job into an eight-hour endeavor.

“We don’t want to take jobs away from individuals,” Daniels said. “But we want to take dangerous jobs away from individuals.”

Goodwill South Florida Service Contracts Division, which runs the program, aims to bring jobs into the community, especially for those with disabilities, said Jocelyne Moussavou, vice president of the department. The drone program began when Source America, a nonprofit dedicated to providing employment opportunities for people with disabilities, awarded Goodwill a grant in October 2025.

While the team waits for a few more approvals and licenses, Moussavou says the drone can go out and clean clients’ buildings as soon as the next month or two. It’s all about making sure there’s enough work to begin hiring employees, which she said would include both experienced window cleaners and those who may face employment barriers. Job listings will post to their website soon, she said.

“It gives people another opportunity to work with a piece of technology that they may not have been given in a secular job that they can’t necessarily compete for,” she said.

During Wednesday’s demonstration, the window washing drone began to elevate into the air as a high-pressure stream of water erupted from the nozzle, washing away the grime stuck on the Allapattah Goodwill Outlet’s walls. The drone has multiple settings, from pressure washing, soft washing to hot water for tough cleans on buildings that don’t want to use to harsh chemicals like bleach and chlorine.

The drone can operate for 30 minutes on each charge and is powered by two lithium batteries. Along with the drone, each clean uses a rig to house a generator, hoses for the different kinds of washing, tanks of deionized water and any other materials necessary for the cleaning process.

Manuel Varela, who also pilots Goodie, says the drone has switchable nozzles for whatever the cleaning job calls for. He has extensive experience in drone flying, but he’s looking forward to seeing the team expand.

The drone took about two months to put together, and while they’re still in the beginning phases, the main goal is to get the equipment ready, so jobs become available, he said.

“It’s an industrial drone, so it’s very different from a consumer drone,” Varela said. “We already organized a lot of operating procedures and training material. The lucky part for us is that we had a very experienced team that was able to work everything together.”

Before Goodie took off for a second demonstration, Goodwill South Florida CEO David Landsberg emphasized that Goodwill is willing to use new technologies to help create opportunities for people in the community that need them.

“We happened to see a funding opportunity to forge ahead in new technology, and of course we do what we always do,” Landsberg said. “We say we can do that and go about doing it. We were given the trust and people saw the capability in us doing it.”