Christmas season: the paper mills are having a blast!

Did you know that from Thanksgiving to Christmas, the U.S. produces about 6 million more tons of waste than during the rest of the year? Ouch! Most of that is due to the beautiful array of Christmas cards adorning all of our desks and mantles, and a lot of the rest of it is due to all the presents so nicely wrapped under the tree.

My family is infamous for reusing wrapping paper, thanks to grandparents who knew how to run a tight budget during the Depression. Old habits die hard, and ever since I can remember, we've had a box of old wrapping paper in the basement ready to be used again the next year. We realized we were at the extreme the year my uncle used newspaper and gum to seal up his gifts--you can't recycle much more than that! Although most of this was done for laughs and frugality, these days we have more reasons to try to cut back on paper use as concerns for the environment and energy increase.

So here are some ideas on how to cut back on the 8,000 TONS of paper wasted during the holidays.
Good: If you do buy brand new wrapping paper, buy it made from recycled paper. And use less. Remember, the best gifts come in small boxes, and the first step in the slogan is "REDUCE!"
Better: Of course, the second step in the slogan is to reuse, so bring out your inner schoolchild and get creative with your wrapping! You can do the old trick of wrapping in newspaper or comics, or you can get extra creative. What about wrapping in brown grocery sacks and writing a poem or love letter on the package? Or tear out pages from the phone books that have your recipient's name on them. If they really like a certain type of food, cover the gift in the old takeout menus sitting on top of the fridge! You could even use pages from catalogs--just maybe not the same page that you ordered their gift from!
Best: Use real "green!!!" What better way to become the favorite aunt or uncle than to wrap your presents in dollar bills. It's reusable, people won't rip it to shreds, and it will smooth over any hard feelings that were stirred up during Christmas dinner. (Mom and Dad, are you listening?)

Have a great holiday, and please remember to cut back on your usage this year. The ghosts of Christmas future are counting on you.

Contact The Recycling Revolution for how to start a recycling program in your business, venue, or other facility. Call us at (918) 894-2019 or reach us through email at customerservice@therecyclingrevolution.com.
Our website is true to our name: therecyclingrevolution.com.

Brookside is jumping on the bandwagon!

Yes, Tulsa's hotspot along South Peoria is the next strip to start reducing carbon emissions! This week we welcome The Bruhouse Bar and Grill to our growing number of clients who will be recycling their beer bottles. Way to go, everyone!

Our fabulous clients

Our clients are GREAT!

We think each of our clients is wonderful, but this week we'd like to specifically name a few that have stood out or done something special.

*Blake Ewing, owner of Joe Momma's Pizza downtown at First and Elgin, recently won TWO Tulsey awards! He was awarded Restauranteur of 2009 and Entrepeneur of 2009. Congratulations, Blake!

*Libby Auld, owner of Elote Cafe and Catering between 5th and 6th on Boston, also won a Tulsey award! She went home with the Tulsey for the Green category. Way to go, Libby!

*Miranda Kaiser, owner of Cosmo Cafe, is our newest client! The cafe is now enjoying a prime location along Brookside at 33rd and Peoria, with some great new recycling bins out back to save all those beverage bottles! Welcome to the Revolution, Cosmo!

If you are ready to get your office, bar, restaurant, apartment complex, non-profit, or any other entity started with a recycling program, just give us a call or jot us a quick note by email! Our phone is (918) 894-2019 and our lengthy-but-easy-to-remember email address is:
customerservice@therecyclingrevolution.com.
And of course, if you just want to browse the website, you can find it at: www.therecyclingrevolution.com

Recycling Heroes

If you're familiar with recycling in Tulsa, you're probably familiar with the M.E.T. (the Metropolitan Environmental Trust), the city of Tulsa's foundation to promote recycling.

This Monday they are honoring various leaders in the local recycling world, and Kristen and I are proud to be among those who will be recognized for their dedication to recycling. We'll be presented with the "Startup Recycling Business" award of 2009!

(Blatant self-promotion, we know, but it only comes once a year!)

To contact us about how we can help you start a recycling program or be more green in your office, apartment, bar, restaurant, school, daycare, or basically any other type of building with people and recyclables, call us at (918) 894-2019, visit us at therecyclingrevolution.com or email us at customerservice@therecyclingrevolution.com.

The Tulseys!

The nominees for the Tulsey awards have been announced, and Kristen and I are just jumping for joy at being nominated for the GREEN category! What an honor! Please check out the other nominees, and after browsing through our well-thought out answers to their 6 questions, vote for The Recycl....the best candidate!

Here's the link to the voting page: http://thetulseys.com/

And remember, you can always check out our business website at:
Therecyclingrevolution.com . Happy recycling and happy voting!

Doin' our fair share

The Tulsa State Fair begins this Thursday, October 1st! This is great news for fried food junkies and 4H fans alike. However, if eating fair food and people watching among your fellow Tulsans isn't enough fair fun for you, try volunteering to be a recycling volunteer! You'll get a cool "Environmental Volunteer" t-shirt and a discount for certain food vendors. Plus, by helping to recycle at the fair, you'll be promoting environmental awareness among Oklahomans while rescuing tons of plastic bottles and aluminum cans from sitting in the landfill next to all those gnawed-on turkey legs. (None of that stuff will biodegrade in the landfill, so keep it from going in there in the first place!)

If you're interested in volunteering, contact customerservice@therecyclingrevolution.com or call us at (918) 894-2019. For basic info on our recycling service, visit The Recycling Revolution website. See you at the Fair !

Relating recycling to politics in Tulsa

For those of us over 18 living in Tulsa, it's time to start thinking about the November mayoral elections. Tomorrow night (September 22nd) several local organizations are hosting the "Green Leaders Mayoral Forum" at the Tulsa Garden Center (2435 South Peoria) from 7-9pm.

Why is this important? Well, remember a little agreement called the Kyoto Protocol? The U.S. didn't actually sign it because it feared it would harm the economy. A few years later, the mayor of Seattle had the idea to encourage local political leaders to meet (or, in some cases, to make) environmental goals proposed by the Kyoto Protocol. What does this mean? It means that, regardless of how much we love or hate our national leaders, we have the power to take matters into our own hands. We don't have to wait for the President to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on a federal level, we can start putting its guidelines in place right now to protect our local resources and environment. In fact, in May 2007, Mayor Kathy Taylor herself signed the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. She was #500 of now 973 U.S. mayors who have signed it. These mayors understand that it's the work and responsibility of citizens on a local level to reduce greenhouse gases and protect natural resources.

Recycling is a very simple way to reduce greenhouse gases. According to the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), recycling these matericals reduces the related greenhouse gases by this percentage:
Steel cans: 100%
PET plastic: 95%
Aluminum: 79%
Glass: 55%
Newspaper: 30%
[Source: http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/waste/downloads/chapter7.pdf]

Recycling is one way that we can all help reduce greenhouse gases, and this will help Tulsa keep in step with the target set by the Kyoto protocol: 7% greenhouse gas reduction of 1990 levels by 2012. The other way we can help protect the environment is by ensuring good political leadership for the future. Hope to see you tomorrow night at the Green Leaders Mayoral Forum!

For more information on how to recycle or on setting up a program in your organization or business, you can:
Visit the website at therecyclingrevolution.com
Call us at (918) 894-2019
Write us at customerservice@therecyclingrevolution.com

Tomorrow night we'll be Greening the 918!

Gosh, Green Country is just brimming with information and resources on how to be green. Now we just need to get our collective act together and get down to business!

Saturday was a Green Expo at TU, this coming weekend you still have a chance to visit the first LEED certified single-family home in Tulsa (that means it's a green home), and tomorrow night is a workshop on solid waste/recycling called Greening the 918. The Recycling Revolution's own Kristen McCormick will be on the panel, so come drill her with questions about recycling. It's going to be rainy tomorrow anyway, so come on over from 5:30 to about 7:30 to see all the booths at the Central Center, 1028 E. 6th Street, by Centennial Park.

If you do (sadly) happen to miss the "Greening the 918" event and you have some questions or comments, you can always call us at (918) 894-2019, write us at customerservice@therecyclingrevolution.com, or visit our website at therecyclingrevolution.com .

Have a great week and don't forget to rinse out your steel cans before you recycle them!

Environmental Appraisal

The Recycling Revolution was founded out of a need for a more thorough recycling service in the Tulsa metro area. Yes, there's the city's curbside recycling service, and yes, there are paper recycling companies. But no one was available to pick up the tons (literally!) of glass from bars or the loads of steel cans from restaurants. Filling that gap is our goal as we, as well as society as a whole, recognize the value of the environment.

A recent article in The Economist (Environmental Values, April 13th, 2009) states that about a third of the world's GNP (gross national product) can be attributed to the environment's coasts and marine ecosystems. Basically, if it weren't for all the tourism, recreational activities, and hunting that goes on along the coasts and lakes, the world would be $20 trillion poorer. Ouch! Out of this realization, people started asking why the government isn't putting an actual price tag on all these natural resources to protect them, which in turn protects the economy. It's an interesting idea, albeit hard to swallow if it means higher taxes or fees for outdoor activities!

If we could actually see the value of nature as we walk by, imagine how it would change our perspective. If each tree you passed had a tag for $500, would you use less paper in the office? Or if each field filled with virgin metal ore had a big sign reading $20,000, would you be more likely to recycle all those pop cans after the party? Once we start calculating the REAL cost of products, including the environmental cost, we appreciate those items much more. The Recycling Revolution tries its best to live by that idea; we're doing what we can to help protect the natural resources we still have. Everything has its own hidden cost...better to pay a small price now to conserve it than a much bigger price down the road to rebuild it from scratch!

For more information about The Recycling Revolution, visit our website at therecyclingrevolution.com or call us at (918) 894-2019. Thanks!

How did plastic get its name? Well, it LASTs forever; it's always STICking around!

OK, ok, so that's not really where the name pLASTic came from, but it's true. What was once plastic's biggest bragging right, the fact that it's around forever, has now become its biggest vice. Following are ten tips for how to clean up our act and cut back on our plastic consumption.


Ten Tips for Reducing Plastic Consumption

1) DO use a reusable, durable shopping bag; DON’T use plastic bags at the grocery store, clothes store, electronics store, and everywhere else you shop.

2) DO use a reusable water bottle; DON’T waste resources on one-use water bottles. Combine that with a water filter on your faucet, and you’re doing as well as Dasani and Aquafina!

3) DO check local laws for what can be recycled; DON’T assume that all plastics can be recycled everywhere. (In Oklahoma, only plastics #1 and #2 can be recycled. Let’s work to change that!)

4) DO find other uses for plastic containers that can’t be recycled; DON’T forget that it’s non-biodegradable for a reason: to be reused!! (And I used to complain about all those empty butter containers my mom saved…)

5) DO stick your fresh veggies straight in the grocery cart or your own reusable bag; DON’T use a separate produce bag for each one. After all, you’re supposed to wash them once you get home anyway!

6) DO learn how to do things yourself, such as how to make your own yogurt at home; DON’T under appreciate the joy of learning a new skill and simultaneously keeping all those #5 containers from the landfill!

7) DO use biodegradable poop bags or a pooper scooper to clean up after your pets; DON’T buy those plastic bags that are here today, and the next day, and the next…

8) DO buy products that are packaged in products instead of plastic; DON’T buy a product without thinking about the consequences of what it came in! (For example, buy bar soap instead of gel soap. This will probably even save money, too. I promise, bar soap will get you just as clean! )

9) DO refuse to take plastic utensils when you get fast food or eat out. DON’T be afraid to bring your own set of reusable silverware or chopsticks!

10) In the end, if you do end up using something plastic, DO recycle it when you’re totally done with it; DON’T ever burn it or litter nature with it.

Reduce plastic consumption!

I wanted to use a much more creative title, such as "Plastic: NOT fantastic!" or "The Garbage...er...Cabbage Patch Kids" or “Stuck in the Plastic Doldrums.” But I didn’t want to obscure the actual message behind the post, because it’s such an important one.

Perhaps you’ve heard of this horrendous thing mankind has accidentally created called The North Pacific Ocean Gyre. It's also called "The Great Pacific Garbage Patch," and the name that to me sounds the most shocking: "The Pacific Trash Vortex." The name alone conjures up an image of some huge swirling mass of plastic and waste that could swallow up any creature that ventures nearby! Although the North Pacific Ocean Gyre isn’t exactly a whirlpool threatening to consume any object that nears it, it does have its share of threats to be taken seriously.

This huge gyre is where all the plastic that’s been swept out to sea is broken down into tiny plastic fragments, often too small to be noticed by unaware sailors, or worse, by unaware marine creatures. These minute plastic particles, caught in the doldrums of the sea, basically just get stuck there until they get eaten. Since plastic was made to be durable and stay forever, it never decomposes like other materials; it just keeps breaking down smaller while retaining the same durable properties. This means that small fish and jellyfish end up eating the plastic bits along with plankton, and these harmful bits work their way all the way up the food chain to us! While we sit around and worry about BPA in our water bottles, we could end up eating it in the fish we cook for dinner.

The toxic stew that they call the North Pacific Ocean Gyre could just as well be called the “seafood soup” that we dine on tomorrow! This is an issue that all of us need to start resolving—yes, even those of us in the Midwest! Check back soon for some handy tips on how to use less plastic, and visit us at therecyclingrevolution.com for more information on how to start recycling in Oklahoma.

For a recent news article on the Pacific Gyre, read this Reuters article.

Watch out world...here comes Oklahoma!

That's right...Oklahoma is catching up to the big time. The East has its recycling programs up and down the coast, the West fines you if you don't join in their recycling efforts, and for a long time the Midwest was just olblivious to all the changes on either side. But all that is changing, because the place they call "Green Country" is realizing that it won't stay green without a little effort on everyone's part.

And so began the Revolution. The Recycling Revolution, we call it. We looked around and saw that in the midst of this beautiful region, people were still doomed to throw their recyclables in a big hole in the ground, simply because as a society we were too lazy to do something about it. We've created The Recycling Revolution to address a real need in the Tulsa region: recycling for materials besides paper and for every kind of facility. We're committed to recycling because it's the right thing to do, and our goal is to accept any kind of material that can be recycled in Oklahoma, not just what's worth the most money. Also, we provide this service to anybody who is willing to get on board, not just clients who are convenient for us to service.

If we can find a way to make a recycling program work for you, we'll do it. Doing the right thing can be a revolutionary idea, and that's what we're all about! Join our revolution and let us know what we can to do help you recycle! Visit us at http://www.therecyclingrevolution.com/ to get more information or email us at customerservice@therecyclingrevolution.com with any questions.