Tomra recycles black polymers from retired reverse vending machines into new plastics

23 Aug 2024 --- Waste sorting specialist Tomra has developed a “continuous loop” solution to recycle and reuse black plastic components from its industrial equipment. Through a value-chain collaboration, it recycles materials from retired Tomra reverse vending machines (RVMs) while feeding back quality recycled content into the production of new Tomra machines. 

Christina Ek, head of Sustainability at Tomra Collection, tells Packaging Insights that while scaling this kind of technology is vital, investment from waste management and recycling companies is needed to actualize the value of these recycled polymers. 

“Reverse vending machines like Tomra’s collect drink containers so that they can be recycled in a continuous loop — so these machines that handle packaging are now becoming increasingly circular, in the same way as the packaging they handle,” she explains.

“We need demand for recycled black polymers to avoid this valuable material being sent to incineration at the end of product life. This project is important for Tomra’s circularity commitments, and we encourage other producers to join us.”

“Full circularity” for industrial systems
The system enables “full circularity” across various polymer components found in Tomra’s machines, which sort and recycle more than 46 billion used beverage containers around the world annually. 

It presents an opportunity for other producers of black plastic-based hardware to do the same. 

Black polymer parts are separated and sent to Polykemi.“Packaging producers have been taking responsibility in the use of consumer black plastic in the interests of recyclability, and now industrial black plastics must follow suit,” stresses Ek.

Working with the European Recycling Platform in Norway, Tomra reverse vending machines are responsibly decommissioned at the end of their 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. 

After that, the fully documented, high-quality recycled content is sent to Tomra’s existing injection molding partners to become new polymer parts.

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 molded 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, stresses Tomra.

To enable such applications, 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. 

While this is a common practice for clear and colored compounds, it presents challenges for black compounds.

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 colored black.

“We are not aware of other cases of a closed loop for black polymers meeting high criteria for quality without any downgrading. As such, Tomra is seeking to lead by example and break new ground in demonstrating real-world applications of what can be achieved,” says Ek.

“We would love to build a community of other manufacturers working toward the same goal of circularity, and we invite others to be part of this collaboration to truly show the value it can have for the industry. Tomra’s Recycling portfolio also features technology for this, with the Tomra Autosort Black being a solution to separate carbon-filled black plastics by polymer types.”

By Natalie Schwertheim