SOLUTION / PUBLIC SOURCE RECORD
TOMRA fights plastic pollution through reverse vending
- Published 15 December 2022; updated 21 September 2026; estimated reading time 3 minutes. Marked available in the Americas, Europe, Asia and Africa; listed under Circular economy and Agritech and food production.
- TOMRA Collection’s reverse vending machines (RVMs) are used in deposit-return systems: consumers receive a deposit refund after returning eligible beverage containers. The machines count returns, reject ineligible items and calculate refunds. The article says sorting bottles and cans separately reduces contamination and enables closed-loop recycling back into new containers.
- The page says deposit-return systems can achieve nearly 98% return rates and were present in 50 regions worldwide. It references the EU target to collect 90% of single-use plastic drink bottles by 2029. These are article figures and cited policy targets, not a statement of current country-by-country performance.
- TOMRA, founded in 1972, is described as the largest RVM provider, with about 82,000 installations across more than 60 markets and over 45 billion beverage containers captured each year for reuse/recycling. These are company figures associated with the 2022 article and may have since changed.
- The page’s environmental context claims more than 500 billion plastic bottles are sold annually, 32% of discarded plastic packaging ends up in nature, and the equivalent of a garbage truck of plastic enters oceans each minute.
- Contact: Zara Lauder, Communication Manager, TOMRA Collection, zara.lauder@tomra.com. Company: TOMRA SYSTEMS ASA, Drengsrudhagen 2, 1385 Asker, Norway; tomra.com. A phone-number reveal control is present.