Tulsa Company Wants To Recycle Your Leftover Wrapping Paper, Boxes

Tulsa's American Waste Control is celebrating its annual "Unboxing Christmas" campaign.

It runs from Saturday to January 6, 2016 and is designed to encourage recycling for most of the Christmas packaging and wrapping generated during the holidays. 

Because Christmas was on a Friday, recycling crews came in on Saturday to run their normal routes in the Tulsa metro. Combined with 600-plus "Mr. Murph" recycling collection bins, a lot of Christmas wrapping materials end up at Tulsa Recycle and Transfer.

Proceeds from the "Unboxing Christmas" campaign will go to benefit Tulsa's John 3:16 Mission, a charity dedicated to restoring hope to homeless and at-risk men, women and children as they minister to their physical, mental, emotional and spiritual needs. 

American Waste Control hopes to recover 2.5-million pounds of recyclables. Items that cannot be recycled will go to their waste to energy landfill where trash is generated into electricity for over 4,800 homes.

"On the holidays there's especially a tremendous amount of packaging that goes into a lot of the gifts that we purchase," AWC's Robert Pickens said. "Many many of those are recyclable and that's why we really want to focus on it this time of year, keep it away from the landfills and give it a second life."

Not everything can be recycled through the separator. The City of Tulsa wants people to make sure to avoid throwing gift bags, Styrofoam, plastic straps, firm plastics or tree skirts into their curbside recycling bins or bins around the city.

Tulsa Recycle and Transfer will also accept your live Christmas trees, but you have to remove all lights, tinsel, and ornaments prior to recycling your tree! 

You can take your tree directly to the Tulsa Recycle and Transfer facility at 1150 North Peoria Avenue.  
 
In addition, old Christmas lights and electrical cords can be dropped off at the downtown Tulsa Metropolitan Environmental Trust location at 1101 South Cincinnati, the central Tulsa MET location at 3495 South Sheridan, as well as the Broken Arrow MET location at 302 North Elm Place.