Gift The Environment With Tulsa After-Christmas Recycling Event

Rick Wells, News On 6

TULSA, Oklahoma -- The beautifully wrapped cardboard boxes under your Christmas tree will become an ugly pile of trash on the curb the day after Christmas. Why not give the environment a gift this year?

A group in Tulsa is offering free recycling for all that cardboard and Styrofoam packing material.

Trash on every corner - tons and tons of it - it's like an unpleasant Christmas tradition. The Environmental Protection Agency says we generate a million tons more trash in the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Years, much of it Styrofoam packing material and boxes.

"We're gonna unbox Tulsa," announced Barbara VanHankin.

Gonna what? "'Unbox,'" she said, referring to the tons of extra cardboard boxes that go into the landfill after Christmas each year.

"Sitting there thinking about Christmas coming - there's a better way to do this," VanHankin said. "I'm a recycler; we can do better."

Learn More About Un-Boxing Day

Barbara is a master recycler. Her group got together with the Metropolitan Environmental Trust who partnered with the Harley Hollen Companies to recycle Christmas cardboard and Styrofoam for free.

"It's the right thing to do and what better time to do the right thing," said Harley Hollen.

So here's what they are doing:for the 12 days after Christmas they will take all your Styrofoam and cardboard.

"We'd like to have the boxes flattened with the wrapping paper taken off, and the Styrofoam put in plastic bags and tie the bags up," Hollen said.

That will keep the Styrofoam from blowing all over. They'll even recycle the plastic bags. There will be volunteers to help unload the stuff.

Like a gift for the environment: fewer cardboard boxes and less Styrofoam in the landfill.

For 12 days after Christmas, take your flattened, unwapped boxes and bagged up Styrofoam to Harley Hollen Companies at 5677 S. 107th E. Avenue in Tulsa.