TOMRA, a global provider of advanced collection and sorting systems, announced a bold new mission to “transform how we all obtain, use and reuse the planet’s resources to enable a world without waste.” The mission honors the organization’s 50th anniversary, while looking to the future of resource optimization. “We live in a world that needs big transformation. We urgently need to accelerate the circular economy and make more efficient use of resources – opportunities that TOMRA’s solutions can help address,” explained Tove Andersen, president and CEO of TOMRA.

“TOMRA has a fifty-year heritage of innovation and impact, with the proven solutions our customers – and the planet – really need. These past fifty years have prepared us to rise to the most pressing challenge of our time: reinventing the way the world manages waste. We strive to lead the resource revolution, and our team of resource revolutionaries around the world are up to the challenge.”

Today, TOMRA has more than 100,000 installations in over 80 markets, with over 4,600 employees across the company worldwide. TOMRA Collection, which develops reverse vending machines to enable beverage container recycling, captures over 40 billion drink containers each year. Its reverse vending machines enable 4.5 million tons in avoided carbon emissions.

To fight plastic waste, TOMRA has an ambition to enable 40% of plastic packaging produced globally to be collected for recycling by 2030. Currently, only 14% of all the world’s plastic packaging is captured for recycling, with just 2% recycled in a ‘closed loop’ (recycled for the same purpose without being downgraded to lower quality plastic).

The company has also set the goal to collect 500 billion containers annually for Clean Loop Recycling, the company’s version of closed-loop recycling, so they can become new bottles and cans, again and again. This reduces reliance on raw materials in the production of new containers, and ensures fewer containers end up in our streets, oceans and landfills.

“TOMRA’s work is more urgent and relevant than ever,” said Andy Hollyer, President and CEO of TOMRA North America, Inc. and SVP and Head of TOMRA Collection Solutions Americas. “Our solutions directly address the most salient sustainability challenges we face today – from driving the circular economy, to eliminating plastic pollution, to ending food waste. What we have achieved in the last fifty years is only the beginning of the positive impact we intend to make.”

“While TOMRA Collection provides the technology, these achievements would not be possible without the commitment of our retail partners and recyclers in the Americas – and, indeed, around the world. We look forward to continuing to work together to achieve these ambitious goals,” added Andy Hollyer.

TOMRA was founded in Norway on April 1, 1972 by brothers Petter and Tore Planke. After seeing a local grocer struggle with the manual collection of empty bottles in their store, the brothers developed the first fully-automated reverse vending machine in their family’s garage. This invention was quickly embraced by retailers and spawned an entire industry for efficiently handling the return and recycling of deposit beverage containers, also setting TOMRA as an early pioneer in the green-tech wave.

TOMRA has continued to innovate in the reverse vending space. The most recent development saw the launch of TOMRA R1, a “multi-feed” solution that enables recyclers to pour over 100 containers into the machine at once, rather than inserting them one by one. TOMRA has also integrated the Internet of Things and big data to enable container recycling to go digital, with options for paperless refund vouchers, analytics for stores on return patterns, a retailer app with notifications about machine status, and a consumer app with functionalities for maps, donation and gamification of container returns.

From its early focus on designing and manufacturing reverse vending machines, TOMRA has also expanded its work in resource sustainability into providing advanced sorting systems for the the food, recycling, and mining industries. These technology-led solutions optimize resource recovery and minimize waste, in ever-greater demand as sustainability grows more vital with businesses, governments and the public.

CEO Tove Andersen concluded: “Transformation is at the heart of everything TOMRA does. TOMRA transforms ideas and technology to create intelligent and pioneering tools. We transform companies into more profitable, sustainable businesses and transform how the world’s resources are obtained, used, and reused, which also helps transform people’s everyday lives.”

For more information, visit www.tomra.com.

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