Tomra RVMs with sorting capacity placed in new locales

Retail customers in Germany and Denmark can now pour more than 100 empty beverage containers into a reverse vending machine (RVM) in one go, rather than inserting them one by one, with the placement of the first Tomra R1 models in those nations.

The “multi-feed” Tomra R1 RVM has gone live at the ABC Lavpris supermarket in the city of Tarm, Denmark, and at the Edeka Massak store in Kronach, Germany. Tomra describes Germany as “a recycling world champion, with its deposit-return system for recycling empty drink containers achieving a 98 percent return rate for eligible containers.” Denmark is not far behind, with a return rate of 92 percent, says Tomra.

In the Netherlands, the first publicly available Tomra R1 will go live before the end of October at Tomra’s office in Apeldoorn for a charity initiative.

Tomra says its roll-out of the R1 in Europe has included Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Finland and the two nations added in October, as well as redemption centers in the United States.

Regarding the impact of the R1, Tomra says an independent research agency conducted in-store interviews with nearly 120 household consumers, plus store owners and managers, and staff responsible for recycling stations in nine stores in Norway, Sweden and Finland.

“A clear 100 percent of respondents stated that they preferred multi-feed return of containers over single-feed returns (that is, inserting containers one by one),” states Tomra. Consumer reasoning for this preference included time savings, ease of use, less physical effort, higher capacity, better hygiene and a cleaner in-store recycling area due to fewer spills. Respondents also said because of the large container volumes they returned and higher deposit refund, almost all respondents said they would spend their refund in store.

 More than 70 percent of respondents said they had chosen to shop at that specific store that day because they would also be recycling there. Around 45 percent of multi-feed users in Norway said they spend more money in-store than planned when they also have in-store credit after recycling.