I am thankful the Tulsa World ran the story.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?subjectid=46&articleid=20120226_15_E1_CUTLIN329241Recycling puts money back into Oklahoma economyBy PHIL MULKINS World Action Line Editor
Published: 2/26/2012
With 1,100 workers, the Georgia-Pacific plant in Muskogee is the city's largest employer - mostly in the name of recycling. The plant buys recycled newsprint by the truckload and turns it into pulp for making many products, including fine writing and printing paper, coffee filters and tea bags, disposable wipes, diapers, etc. Yesterday's newspapers - a raw material for paper manufacturing - can become tomorrow's paper towels, instead of filling a landfill somewhere.
But the ultimate by-product? Jobs for local people. "It's not just a planet-saving project anymore," said Michael Patton, director of the Metropolitan Environmental Trust. "Recycling is now a big business that creates jobs and puts money back into the Oklahoma economy, not the landfill. Those Muskogee jobs are good examples of why residents should recycle. Someone else can make a living with them." The Tulsa-based MET is a big part of recycling's success. The organization collects, sorts and resales recyclable items to companies like Georgia-Pacific. Four area glass manufacturing plants buy the recycled bottle glass from the MET and the Tulsa city recycling program: Owens-Illinois Glass in Muskogee, Dlubak Glass in Okmulgee, Anchor Glass in Henryetta and the Verallia Glass Plant in Sapulpa. They employ about 1,200 people.
Orchid Paper Products Company, a fiberboard company in Pryor, has 300 jobs for people who use recycled paper and cardboard to make wallboard for the construction industry. Figures from National Economic Research Associates show 12 jobs are created per ton of material recycled vs. discarded. He said Oklahoma State University did a research project five years ago on manufacturing jobs of workers using recycled materials to make new goods. It revealed 6,000 Oklahoma recycling jobs with a $300 million annual payroll. The MET itself employs 120 people with disabilities to run their 13 recycling centers and sort items. The agency, which dates back to 1987, is a governmental trust authority that receives funding from governments to operate residential recycling drop-off locations.
Last year, Tulsa city residents put 137,000 tons of material into the trash, 60 percent of which is recyclable. But only 7,000 tons of material was recycled (8.5 percent). In the steel recycling arena, the figure runs at 20 percent to 30 percent for automobiles, he said. And, Patton says, there's room for more. "Oklahoma does a bad job of extracting recyclables from its trash," he said. "But a lot of that stuff coming into Oklahoma still makes jobs here. On Feb. 16, the MET unveiled its new baling center where the agency is using seven new employees to bale plastic bottles and aluminum cans to sell to Tulsa recycling companies."
The bottles, he said, are worth three times crushed what their value is loose in trailers, and the bottles' added value supports the seven new jobs. The $30,000 baling machine was bought by a George Kaiser Family Foundation grant. There are other people collecting recyclables for resale: janitors and waste companies like American Waste Control that just started a new factory here with a new line of 16 jobs per shift to separate recyclables out of mixed trash, Patton said. They even run a TV ad about their plant.
The reason recycling has taken longer to catch on here is trash is expensive to throw away in most parts of the world but not in Oklahoma, Patton said. Disposal rates here are $11 to $12 per ton but $100 per ton on the East Coast. "We've not been compelled to do anything but landfill it or burn it cheaply at the trash-to-energy plant, but recycling is such a bother," he said. "Ninety percent of Oklahomans think, 'Why should I recycle?' The reason is it has become a lot more valuable. It's a commodity now that creates jobs and makes lots of money.
"The value of the commodity is much more than trash. Why would you throw away something that's valuable? Why would you throw away something that has a chance to be something else? There are lots of things that have always been recycled - things we don't talk about very much." You can even recycle cars, Patton noted. Yaffe Metals and Borg Compressed Steel have always bought and crushed cars and sold them to the steel industry to make more cars. "Tulsa has a long history of recycling steel, producing hundreds of steel recycling jobs," he said. "We never drive our old cars to the landfill and throw them away. These are things people never think of throwing away. Yet people keep throwing away bottles, aluminum cans and paper."
The Oklahoma Recycling Association is the organized voice for Oklahoma recyclers and recycling businesses representing them to Oklahoma's political leaders. It is a center point for networking and resource sharing and is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization working to support communities, governments and individuals in recycling. "Recycling means many things to Oklahomans," according to the OKRA website. "Beyond resource conservation and managing solid waste, recycling creates Oklahoma jobs. Recent studies show there are more than 6,000 jobs in Oklahoma created by recycling related processes. These jobs represent $300 million in payroll each year - payroll spent at Oklahoma businesses."
Big Recyclers
CITY OF TULSA: Tulsa curbside recycling, 918-596-9777 tulsaworld.com/TulsaCurbsideRecycle Services households in the City of Tulsa. No apartments or businesses. Accepts newspaper, office paper, magazines, glass bottles, No. 1 and No. 2 plastic bottles, aluminum cans.
MET RECYCLING CENTERS: The Metropolitan Environmental Trust operates 13 recycling drop-off centers throughout Tulsa County. Some MET communities operate their own recycling centers, called affiliates. See a list of its recycling centers at tulsaworld.com/METCenters
The MET's website has a directory of all the companies that are open in Tulsa as recycling entities - the "Tulsa Metro Recycling Directory" at tulsaworld.com/METRecyclerDirectory. They all will accept Nos. 1 and 2 plastic bottles, glass bottles, newspaper, office paper, magazines, aluminum cans, motor oil (5-gallon limit), antifreeze (5-gallon limit), batteries (household and auto), cooking oil, eyeglasses, steel cans and phone books.
The MET has 13 recycling centers in Tulsa (north, east, central, south and west), Bixby, Broken Arrow, Claremore, Collinsville, Coweta, Jenks, Sand Springs and Owasso.
