Norman program sets standard for responsible recycling

Each year on November 15, Americans recognize efforts to protect our planet and its resources with America Recycles Day. The City of Norman celebrates it every day with a multitude of efforts.

Chris Mattingly, director of the City of Norman's Utilities Department, says our recycling crews are working to manage a path to ensure that the recyclable materials collected by the City are processed as efficiently and completely as possible. It's a complicated and complex operation, but Mattingly says it's worth it.

Brandon McLendon, Interim Solid Waste and Recycling Manager said, "it is impressive how our City of Norman citizens invest their time and effort into taking over 1,000 tons of recyclable goods to one of our four drop centers." Due to their efforts at the drop centers, the products are pre-sorted as people place them into their proper drop slots. Special trucks load the drop center cages and take them straight to a recycler. "Norman also has commercial businesses who maintain cardboard containers for their business as well that yields over 1,000 tons of cardboard per year." McLendon said. "This too is trucked straight to Smurfit Westrock, the world's largest paper packaging company, for recycling and creates a range of paper products."

Glass is picked up by Ripple Glass and taken to Kansas City, Missouri, to be recycled. The glass doesn't just end up as new spaghetti sauce jars or beer bottles. It also becomes fiberglass insulation, countertops, flooring and other highly durable products.

The curbside recycling program is a bit more complicated and customers place more than 4,000 tons of mixed recyclables into their blue polycarts every year. The curbside recycling system requires the mixed materials to be sorted for recycling. That sorting process occurs at Stutzman Material Recovery Facility in Hutchinson, Kansas. Once the commodities are sorted, they are sold to various companies as feed stock.

Mixed paper from the curbside recycling is sent to a Georgia Pacific facility in Muskogee. There, it will be processed into paper towels, napkins and toilet paper. Cardboard travels to facilities in Texas and Oklahoma where it will be recycled into new cardboard that is sent all over the country to make new boxes. Put simply, they make new boxes from old boxes. Some familiar names that the cardboard is recycled for is Domino's and Papa John's pizza boxes as well as many others who ship products. McLendon pointed out that only grease-free pizza boxes and recommended that the side of the box with grease be thrown away with regular solid waste and the side without grease be recycled.

Cardboard products are also taken to Pratt Industries in Oklahoma City. Pratt is the fifth-largest corrugated packaging company and the world's largest, privately-held 100% recycled paper and packaging company.

Aluminum cans are sent to pressing facilities in Oklahoma and Kentucky, where they are shredded, melted into ingots, sold and manufactured into cans again. It can take as little as six weeks from the time an aluminum can is created for it to be recycled and remanufactured into a new can.

Steel cans are sent to Oklahoma or Indiana, where they are shredded and sold to steel manufactures who process it into sheets of steel to be used in everything from new cars to new cans.

One of the most complicated processes is that of separating and recycling plastics. A glance at the bottom of a plastic container will tell you, with a number, what type of plastic it is made of. Plastics labeled with a "1" - things like water bottles - are sent to Mohawk Industries in Kentucky, where they will be transformed into carpet and laminate flooring.

Plastics labeled with a "2" - high-density polyethylene or HDPE - begin their lives mainly as things like laundry soap containers, milk jugs and household cleaner bottles. When they enter the recycling stream, they travel to Michigan to be recycled into a resin that can be transformed into a huge range of products. In addition to being recycled into new household product bottles, HDPE can be used to make picnic tables and benches, deck lumber, pipes, toys and even new recycling bins.

According to one of the vendor's information, the recycling of plastic bottles requires two-thirds less energy than producing the packaging from virgin materials. Recycling also reduces air and water pollution that would be generated from production using virgin materials.

Lastly, tires are recycled at RTR in Noble, providing employment in Cleveland County. The range of uses for recycled tires range from new tires to playground surfaces, artificial turf, and even garden mulch.

Mattingly said the Utilities Department works very hard to provide the residents of the City of Norman not only with the greatest opportunities to protect our environment and our resources, but to do it as economically as possible.

The City of Norman is committed to providing residents with efficient and effective recycling program. It not only preserves natural resources, it prevents greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), half of all global greenhouse gas emissions are released through the process of extracting natural resources and making new products from them. By taking part in the City of Norman's recycling program, residents are protecting a healthy environment in Norman for future generations.

More information on City of Norman recycling centers can be found at https://www.normanok.gov/your-government/departments/utilities/sanitation/recycling-centers. More information on the curbside recycling program is available at https://www.normanok.gov/your-government/departments/utilities/sanitation/recycling-guidelines-curbside-service.