Northeast OK feeling 'squeeze' of not being able to recycle; Tulsa facility expected to be down several months

And it will continue to divert tons of recyclables to a furnace or landfill for the next several months.

“It’s been a heck of a last 30 days,” said Paul Ross, vice president of American Waste Control.

A lithium ion battery caught fire after hours at Tulsa Recycle & Transfer, 1150 N. Peoria Ave., on April 1, bringing interior temperatures of the facility to 2,500 degrees and decimating a machine that typically processed 35,000 pounds of recyclable material brought in from Tulsa and surrounding communities every hour.

Ross believes the battery was tossed in by some well-meaning or “hopeful” recycler, but the lone cell’s impact on the flow of recycling and refuse in Tulsa and beyond has been nothing short of dramatic.

Lithium ion batteries are recyclable, but not at TRT, which didn’t have a fire suppression system.

The Tulsa Fire Department did an excellent job containing the blaze, but the cost to TRT alone is upward of $7 million, Ross said, and 40 workers are without a job while the facility is down. Meanwhile, the waste-to-energy site to which most of the recyclables are headed, along with the rest of the city’s trash, is operating over-capacity and having to turn away private haulers.

If there’s anything positive out of the ordeal, it’s clear that Green Country loves to recycle, Ross said.

“When we introduced Mr. Murph and the idea of mixing your recyclables together and then them being sorted… it was foreign to northeast Oklahoma; it was new,” Ross said. “Now today, 10 years later, northeastern Oklahoma feels the squeeze of not being able to recycle.”

TRT’s material recovery facility sorted mixed recyclables from the city of Tulsa curbside bins and the contents collected from American’s Mr. Murph bins in area communities like Jenks, Bixby and Glenpool, as well as recyclables brought in from other municipalities such as Bartlesville.

The replacement of a facility like TRT’s would typically take anywhere from 18-22 months, Ross said. Thanks to negotiations with vendors, the company’s looking at a timeline of seven months, but there’s no telling how the pandemic’s effect on steel supply chains will affect the near-complete replacement.

During the wait, the city of Tulsa’s curbside recycling is going to Covanta Tulsa, a waste-to-energy furnace that burns the city’s trash to create super-heated steam, most of which is sent to HollyFrontier’s refinery but some of which is used to turn a turbine generator to power the facility. Whatever energy is left over is sold to the Public Service Company of Oklahoma, Covanta Area Asset Manager Patrick Walsh said.

Most of Covanta’s operation is dedicated to air pollution control. The gases from the furnace are captured and filtered through multiple methods, resulting in about 99.5% of harmful particulate capture, Walsh said. Most of what makes up the puffy white clouds that billow from the facility’s stacks is carbon dioxide and water vapor, and all of it measures under the Environmental Protection Agency’s allowable limit.

Recyclable metals are recovered from the fire’s ashes, and the ashes journey to landfills, where they’re often used as the required 6 inches of cover material over the top, but Covanta is currently researching other ways to reuse the ash, Walsh said.

Covanta Tulsa operates 24/7, 365 days a year taking in municipal refuse from all over greater Tulsa, including Broken Arrow, Sand Springs, Coweta and Owasso. Although its facility is equipped to process the type of recyclables coming in, it can’t process the sudden influx of material that quickly.

Walsh said they’ve had to ask some private haulers to take their trash elsewhere, and they’re working on spacing out scheduling as much as possible.

Curbside trash and recycling pickup for Tulsa residents will begin at 5 a.m. indefinitely, starting May 10, in an effort to cut down on lines at the Covanta facility, the city announced Monday.

Resident’s recycling fees are included in their trash rate, and they are encouraged to get their cans to the curb the night before pickup day and continue separating their recyclables from their trash for the time being to not disrupt good habits during the temporary change, a city spokeswoman said.

TRT is attempting to sort the rest of its recyclables by hand, in which they’re able to catch 15-20% of recyclables, but the rest go to American Environmental Landfill in Sand Springs, which harvests methane gas to power a generator that provides electricity to about 20,000 customers in Osage County.

A landfill alternative for recyclables

Stringent earth-loving Oklahomans need not fear: Recyclables can still be recycled at other facilities, like the Metropolitan Environmental Trust.

Bobby Schultz, executive director of the M.e.t, said many of its centers have seen a gradual increase in use, which he thinks is due to the word slowly spreading that recyclables picked up by municipalities are going to waste-to-energy sites.

The M.e.t. contracts with specialized companies to be able to accept common recyclable materials along with those not accepted in curbside bins, like plastic bags, electronics and motor oil.

“None of it ends up in a landfill,” he said. “None of it ends up being burned.”

The M.e.t. is free to use and has centers staffed by developmentally disabled adults throughout the Tulsa metro area, including Bixby, Broken Arrow, Claremore, Collinsville, Coweta, Glenpool, Sand Springs, Tulsa and an affiliate in Owasso.

So far, the centers are doing OK with the increase, Schultz said, but they couldn’t keep up with demand if all of Tulsa suddenly decided to direct their recycling to the centers.

“(Our workers) stay busy,” he said. “They know what they’re doing, and they do a great job. I think they’re kind of excited to have a little bit more to do, too.”

March 2017 video: Recycling in Tulsa - do's and don'ts of recycling