Tomra Retility Initiative for Black Plastic Recycling

Key Takeaways

• Norway-based Tomra Systems ASA launches Retility to recycle industrial black plastics in a closed loop.
• The programme involves responsible recycling and reusing of materials from retired reverse vending machines (RVMs).
• Black plastics are hard to sort and recycle due to their carbon content and often get incinerated.

Tomra Systems ASA, based in Norway, is tackling the challenge of recycling and reusing industrial black plastics with Retility.

This programme will recycle materials from decommissioned Tomra reverse vending machines (RVMs) and supply high-quality recycled content for new Tomra products.

Retility supports Tomra’s sustainability goals of having at least 90% of materials in new products be sustainable and 50% of products be circular by 2030. It also supports other manufacturers in achieving their own circularity goals.

Together with the European Recycling Platform in Norway, Tomra ensures that its RVMs are responsibly retired. During the disassembly process, black plastic parts are sorted by polymer type before being sent to Polykemi, a Swedish compounder, for recycling. The recycled material is then used by Tomra’s injection molding partners to produce new components.

Marius Fraurud, head of Tomra Collection, says, “We encourage all relevant producers to join this ecosystem and join us in driving the resource revolution forward. We would be glad to offer our insight on this initiative and facilitate any necessary connections between stakeholders.”

Christina Ek, sustainability head at Tomra Collection, says, “We hope that this initiative will result in a vast amount of valuable black plastic being diverted from incineration towards recycling, while unlocking greater access to recycled content for our peers across the technology and manufacturing industries. At Tomra, we have a saying that there is no such thing as waste. Retility is about putting that into practice. We are excited to explore even more opportunities to deliver on our product circularity goals.”

Tomra also points out the challenge of recycling black plastics. Different plastics are used for different purposes, and the composition of the plastics must be documented to meet the intended application requirements. Sorting technologies are used to keep the material pure, but black plastics, often coloured with carbon, are hard to sort. As a result, they often get incinerated instead of recycled.

Black plastics are found in computer and mobile technology, where they make up a big chunk of the plastic used and in the automotive industry, where they are even more common.

For more information on the Retility project, click here.

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Source: Recycling Today