'Unboxing' turns trash into a second Christmas gift
BY RHETT MORGAN World Staff Writer
Thursday, December 27, 2012
12/27/12 at 8:01 AM
With Christmas in the rear-view mirror, a new season is upon us.
It's the holiday recycling season.
Recycling efforts will extend through Jan. 6 as part of the "Unboxing Christmas 12 Days Campaign." The project is a collaboration among the city of Tulsa, the Metropolitan Environmental Trust, American Waste Control and the Harley Hollan Cos.
American Waste Control is donating a portion of the proceeds from the recyclables to the Tulsa Salvation Army and the Sandy Hook Elementary School Fund in Connecticut. Proceeds from the Harley Hollan collections will benefit Turning Tulsa Pink, which supports the families of women and children with cancer.
"It's going really well," Tom Hill, chief executive officer of American Waste Control, said Wednesday in a telephone interview. "We're seeing our first loads come in. We've been pleasantly pleased with the amount of cardboard and fiber in the loads."
American Waste Control owns Tulsa Recycle and Transfer, which recently underwent a $10 million upgrade at its North Peoria Avenue facility, which processes all of the city of Tulsa's household recyclables.
"People are more enthused and more educated about this," Hill said of the post-Christmas "unboxing" campaign. "Some of that is because the city of Tulsa's trash program and recycling program has brought the awareness of recycling up.
"We're seeing it more on the commercial side because of our Mr. Murph containers. ... We're getting a higher participation rate, and we're getting a better quality of recycling materials placed into those containers."
American Waste wants to surpass the more than a million pounds of collections received during last year's after-Christmas campaign, Hill said.
"With our new equipment, we're capable of getting a higher percentage of those recyclables back into new products," said Hill, who placed the recovery rate at 95 percent to 98 percent.
"We've gone from more of a manual process last year to more of an automated process with a manual quality-control check."
How to participate
Where: American Waste Control/Tulsa Recycle and Transfer's Mr. Murph center, 1150 N. Peoria Ave., or at more than 60 Mr. Murph 24-hour locations across northeastern Oklahoma
When: 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily
What: electrical wires, Styrofoam, cardboard, Christmas trees, regular paper, cardboard, plastics, aluminum and glass
Where: Harley Hollan Cos., 5677 S. 107th East Ave.
When: 7:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to noon Saturday, noon to 4 p.m. Sunday
What: cardboard, Styrofoam, Christmas lights, paper and plastics No. 1. (bottles), No. 2 (jugs), No. 4 (trash bags) and No. 5 (medicine bottles, bottle caps, and condiment and syrup containers)
Rhett Morgan 918-581-8395
rhett.morgan@tulsaworld.com
