GREEN BIZ
Making
cash out of trash Tomra Japan Text and photo CHRISTOPHER THOMAS
Japan has a massive recycling system for beverage containers, with high recycling rates, but it is far from perfect. The collection system is low-tech, not to say “no-tech”. Curbside collection sites are often unsightly and the system is very expensive, due to little or no compaction of empty containers before transportation. Surely there’s a better way? Norway’s Tomra Systems has a nifty solution. Its reverse vending machines (RVMs) collect and process all kinds of containers: from glass, aluminium and steel, to PET and other kinds of plastic. Tomra’s RVMs are safe, reliable and fun to use, and they look good. But a key element of the competitive edge, helping Tomra machines maintain their 80% global market share, is the software, notes Tomra Japan President Trond Varlid. “Getting all the sensors and machinery working together, reliably and quickly and with a minimum of errors – this is not easy to do.” The RVMs sense the container’s material and weight, its colour and shape, whether it has liquid still inside it. Then they accept or reject it within half a second, and move it along to meet its fate – shredding for the plastic, crushing for the metal – and bundle the result in tidy sacks for recycling. In return for the containers, the RVMs dispense coupons, tickets or points for point cards, popular incentives for
Japanese consumers. Some can even dispense coins. Business has been picking up here. The company now has 250 RVMs up and running nationwide, 130 of them in Tokyo. A recent tie-up with Sumitomo Corp. is providing sales momentum and some innovations for the Japanese market are generating interest. Tomra has developed a new machine, the City, which is lower and shallower to better fit narrower Japanese spaces. The company has had to overcome challenges, including one fundamental truth about green technology: “No matter how beneficial something is for the environment, it must have commercial merit for businesses for them to take it on,” says Varlid. “It has to save them money or boost their image or somehow generate sales, or they won’t do it.” Recently some firms, particularly beverage makers such as Kirin, have started to pay for RVMs to be set up in private and public spaces. In return, they get space for their own drink machines. Tomra’s RVMs in Japan process more than 50 million containers a year – still a mere drop in the PET bottle sea compared to the estimated 90 billion thrown away in Japan every year. But that just means there is huge potential for this technology to make a dent in the Japanese recycling market.
January Jan Januar anuar uaary 2010 ua 2 2010 010 010 0 January
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