Video: Cherokee Casinos ramp up recycling effort

Smokey Davidson, a Cherokee Recycling employee, pulls a recycling bin for glass materials onto a trailer before taking from the Cherokee Casino Resort in Catoosa, Okla., to the Cherokee Recycling facility, also in Catoosa. (Photo by Christina Good Voice)

By Christina Good Voice
Staff Writer

CATOOSA, Okla. – As part of its effort to become environmentally friendly, Cherokee Nation Entertainment (formerly known as Cherokee Nation Enterprises) established a “green” team more than a year ago, launched a recycling program at its nine properties and is giving business to a local Cherokee citizen-owned recycling company.

Molly Jarvis, CNE marketing vice president, said the team, which was created in March 2008, is responsible for developing CNE’s recycling program. CNE, which operates Cherokee Casinos, recycles its paper, glass, aluminum and plastic.

Following the team’s inception, members defined their recycling and green goals. But before expanding it to other casinos, the team tested the program at Catoosa, Jarvis said.

“We started with just our banquets, so we limited our trial period to find out how it was working, who was going to be involved in recycling, what the needs were,” she said. “And as of February or March of this year we launched it out to our entire company. It just continues to grow.”

In a news release, CNE officials state the casinos has saved 437 trees, 106 cubic yards of landfill space, 53 barrels of oil and reduced carbon dioxide by nine tons since November. The entity has also recycled 29 tons of refuse, with more than 16 tons of that being paper, officials said.

Jarvis said the casino also expanded recycling to the kitchens and bars and have started to see its recycled glass numbers increase.

Other earth-friendly efforts include a carpooling system in which CNE provides an internal Web site for employees to coordinate carpooling and low-cost transportation via Pelivan Transportation for employees who commute. The company also recycles ink cartridges and batteries through office supply vendors.

However, a more noticeable change is the absence of Styrofoam cups on the gaming floor.

“We did convert our gaming floor at Catoosa away from Styrofoam, and we’re now using glass products to serve soft drinks to guests on the floor,” Jarvis said.

She said in the new 19-story hotel tower, aluminum can vending machines would be used rather than glass bottles the resort has typically used.

“Aluminum is a much easier product to be recycled, so we’re really taking heart to take steps to change the way we’re doing business so we can facilitate recycling,” Jarvis said. “I think that goes back to our core and fundamentals of being from Oklahoma and Native Americans and true to ourselves and our land and wanting to preserve that for not only us and our younger generations.”

While becoming more ecologically friendly, CNE also assisted in making a Catoosa-based business a success. Cherokee Recycling is a third-party recycling vendor based in Catoosa that provides services to the Cherokee Casino Resort twice a week.

“We work with Cherokee Recycling, owned by the Deere family,” Jarvis said. “We’re real excited to work with a Cherokee family on this recycling endeavor (and) just the opportunity to work with somebody in Oklahoma and really support that effort as we launch it throughout our entire company.”

Cherokee citizen Bobi Deere, who owns Cherokee Recycling with her husband, began her business about a year ago. The business now services CNE’s seven casinos throughout northeastern Oklahoma and two corporate offices in Tahlequah and Catoosa.

Deere said it was easy to work with CNE because the green team had an idea of how it wanted to do things. So in November, Cherokee Recycling began picking up recyclables from CNE.

“They already had a green team in place. They already knew they wanted to recycle. They were very coordinated and put together very well,” Deere said. “So when I went in they immediately said, ‘we know we want these things.’ So I said, ‘alright, let’s walk through and see what we can do.’”

Deere said she walked through the casino with green team members and they made a plan.

“(We) kind of invented it from the ground up really,” she said. “We had no idea what kind of bins we wanted to do. We had no idea if we were going to go into the facility or if their people were going to bring it out.”

Seven months later, Cherokee Recycling and CNE have a system that works and helps the environment.