Tomra (Asker / Norway; www.tomra.com), regarded as the world’s largest producer of reverse vending machines, has embarked on a global recruitment drive as it prepares to meet predicted “unprecedented” growth for container deposit schemes.

These schemes are one way for countries to meet new recycling targets proposed by the European Commission in May 2018 that require 90% of single-use plastic drinks bottles to be collected by 2025 – see Plasteurope.com of 29.05.2018. “We are at a point where our niche industry is beginning to grow. This is the primary reason for our global recruitment drive. The world is waking up to the fact that we have a huge plastics problem and we need to be far more efficient in the way we recycle. Container deposit schemes are recognised as one of the only ways of achieving these high targets,” commented Aleksander Mortensen, head of Tomra Collection Solutions (TCS) Digital.

Tomra is planning to hire between 1,000 and 2,000 new employees worldwide over a five-year period. The positions will be spread across TCS and Tomra Sorting Solutions and encompass a very broad range of roles, including R&D, management, operations, sales and finance, among others.

Up to 50 of the new positions will be based at Tomra’s headquarters in Norway with hundreds of others being recruited in TCS’s established markets, such as the US, emerging markets like the UK and Australia as well as potential new markets around the world.

The company has also created the new post of head of New Plastics Economy (NPE) at its Tomra Sorting Recycling division, to which it has appointed László Székely. Formerly the firm’s business development engineer, Székely will lead the NPE team to encourage the sorting and recycling of post-consumer plastics such as polyolefins and styrenics with the aim of changing the widespread practice of sending them for incineration or to landfill. An initiative of the same name, the "New Plastics Economy", was started by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation (Cowes / UK; www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org) – see Plasteurope.com of 01.06.2016.

In separate news, Tomra Collection Solutions is now offering digital vouchers as a payout option for container deposit schemes. The service launched first in Queensland / Australia, on 1 November 2018, where a new deposit scheme has begun in a bid to increase recycling rates and combat littering. The vouchers can be redeemed at supermarket retailer Woolworths, which also partners with Tomra on container refunds in New South Wales.

An app – "myTomra" – also offers refunds along with the ability to see reverse vending machine locations and their live status. “With our planet’s resources high on the international agenda and the movement toward paperless working, we thought it was counter-intuitive that a machine that enables recycling should rely on paper,” Mortensen explained.

Tomra said it is the first reverse vending provider to offer digital vouchers and is a next step in making the recycling experience even more flexible and environmentally friendly.