Introducing material circularity initiative, Retility
TOMRA unveils collaborative recycling ecosystem for injection-moulded black plastics
Set up as a means to recycle and reuse materials from retired TOMRA technology, the new scalable, open-access ecosystem has widespread potential to manage the recycling of quality-assured, premium black plastic across a range of industries.
By aligning stakeholders across the plastics value chain, TOMRA offers a response to a major global waste infrastructure dilemma – how to recycle and reuse industrial black plastics in a closed loop.
Established by TOMRA, a global leader in the circular economy, as part of their material circularity initiative, Retility, the value-chain collaboration was set up to effectively recycle materials from retired TOMRA reverse vending machines, while also providing access to quality recycled content for use in the production of new TOMRA technologies.
Contributing to TOMRA’s goals of ensuring, by 2030, that at least 90% of the materials and components in new TOMRA products are sustainable, and at least 50% of TOMRA products are circular at their end of life, the open-access ecosystem can help other manufacturers in pursuit of their own circularity targets too.
Why do black plastics present a challenge?
Different plastic polymers are suited to different applications. While flexible compounds could be effective for making plastic bags, compounds with stronger structural qualities could be a better match for moulded items. But a blend of these compounds might not perform well in either application. This means that the composition of any polymer compound must be reliably documented to ensure it meets the needs of its specific application.
To enable this, sorting technologies are used to separate different polymer types from one another and keep material streams pure, meaning recyclers can be confident of the composition of material going in, and therefore coming out, of their recycling processes. For clear and coloured compounds, this is a common practice, but for black compounds, it’s often a different story.
A common method for making plastic black is to mix it with carbon. Unfortunately, carbon black polymers are notoriously difficult to recycle as they are not recognized by many available sorting technologies, whereby different polymer compounds could be separated from one another. This issue is a barrier to keeping each polymer type’s purity high enough to guarantee the desired physical properties are maintained in the new recycled compounds. As a result, carbon black polymers are typically sent for incineration.
Applications of black polymers are found overwhelmingly in computer and mobile technology, where up to 60% of the associated plastics are black, and the automotive industry, where around 90% of plastics are coloured black.
What makes this collaborative ecosystem special?
Working with European Recycling Platform in Norway, TOMRA reverse vending machines are responsibly decommissioned at their end of life. During disassembly, a range of black plastic parts are pre-sorted by polymer type before being passed to Polykemi, an industrial plastics compounder, to be recycled in a quality-assured material stream. Thereafter, the fully-documented, high-quality recycled content is sent to TOMRA’s existing injection moulding partners to become new polymer parts.
This not only enables TOMRA to achieve full circularity across a range of polymer components found in its products, which facilitate the sorting and recycling of more than 46 billion used beverage containers around the world each year, but also provides an opportunity for other producers of black-plastic based hardware to achieve the same.
Marius Fraurud, Head of TOMRA Collection, “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, Head of Sustainability at TOMRA Collection, “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.”
For more information about how to get involved, please contact: [email protected]
About TOMRA Collection
TOMRA Collection provides reverse vending machines for Clean Loop Recycling, to transform society’s habits and keep valuable resources in a continuous loop of use and reuse. The company’s solutions collect aluminum, plastic and glass beverage containers to be continually reused and recycled back into new bottles and cans. With approximately 85,000 installations across more than 60 markets, TOMRA reverse vending machines capture over 46 billion used bottles and cans each year. This reduces reliance on raw materials, and ensures fewer containers end up in our streets, oceans and landfills. TOMRA’s reverse vending machines, digital solutions and service make recycling easy for the industry, system owners, retailers and consumers to contribute to a world without waste. Visit our Reverse Vending pages on www.tomra.com, and follow us on Facebook, X, Instagram and LinkedIn.
TOMRA Collection is a division of TOMRA Group. Today, TOMRA is leading the resource revolution to transform how the planet’s resources are obtained, used and reused. The company’s other business divisions comprise TOMRA Food and TOMRA Recycling. The Group employs over 5,300 people globally and is publicly listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.