Tulsa's New Trash Service Delayed

Tulsa's trash service is changing, but not as soon as first planned. The start date has been moved back to the fall.

Tulsa's current trash system - with the current trash hauler - will continue at least 3 months longer than originally planned to give the new trash hauler time to get ready for the job.

The new service is now planned to start October 1, 2012.

Among the decisions so far, everyone will at first get 2 of the largest size rolling carts, one for trash - and one for recycling.

The plan for green waste is that anything inside the cart will be disposed of at no extra cost. Anything outside the cart incurs an extra cost - on a per bag basis.

Trash Service FAQ

The city will require people to use see thru bags for green waste and will require people to use pre-paid stickers to indicate they've paid for the extra service.

The plan is for recycling to be picked up on the same day as trash, in a city issued cart that's a different color than the trash carts.

Recycling cannot be bagged. And it doesn't need to be pre-sorted. All of the recyclables can be mixed together in the cart.

It's still being determined what items will be accepted - but it's going to be at least as much as what's taken under the current program, with the addition of metal and more types of plastic.

The City of Tulsa  is still working on the final versions of the contracts for the trash service, but expects to have that done within the next two weeks.

The City is close to launching a big public relations effort to explain the new system. There won't be many choices to be made by the public until after Christmas - when customers will be able to change the size of their trash carts to a smaller size if they want.

The only exception to that is that disabled people can start out with the smallest cart - instead of the biggest - which is what everyone else will get.

02/13/2012 Relaed Story: Questions Persist About Tulsa Trash Changes