City Urging Residents To Use Discretion When Recycling Christmas Packaging

The City of Tulsa expects Tuesday to be a big day for recycling Christmas packaging, so they're urging people to use some discretion before they put just anything in the recycling bins.

It's already happening - Christmas decorations are showing up at the sorting center for Tulsa's recycling.

The trucks that pick up in neighborhoods drop off the loads at Tulsa Recycle and Transfer.

Buried in mountains of what can be recycled are all the things that can't be - like shiny gift bags and plastic and Styrofoam packaging.

"Big picture, we're doing great in Tulsa with recycling, it's just those few little things,” said Robert Pickens with Tulsa Recycle and Transfer.

Pickens said the shiny bows, ribbons and bags generally aren't recyclable, and that they shouldn't go in the blue curbside carts because it's difficult to pick it out before it gets into the machine.

“We do get some ribbons and bows and we ask people to remove those and put them in the waste container, not the blue bin because those ribbons especially wrap around our automated equipment,” Pickens said.

Christmas garland is another thing that won't work because things like that tangle up the machine and the whole operation has to stop.

The speed of the system makes those things a problem.

“We ask people to keep the Christmas lights out of there, the artificial tree if something went wrong, don't put the tree in the blue cart and electronics,” Pickens said.

For the most part, recyclables at Christmas are the same as the rest of the year - plastics and paper make up most of it, but the City is asking for a little extra care this Christmas to make sure what goes in the carts belongs in there.

Another way to look at it is that most things that can be recycled will be containers used in the kitchen, laundry or bathroom, but the complete guide is online.