Reverse vending machine
Encyclopedia
Recycling
Recycling is processing used materials into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution and water pollution by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse...
laws or container deposit legislation
Container deposit legislation
Container-deposit legislation is any law that requires collection of a monetary deposit on soft-drink, juice, milk, water, alcoholic-beverage, and/or other containers at the point of sale...
. In some places, bottlers paid funds into a centralized pool to be dispersed to people who recycled the containers. Any excess funds were to be used for general environmental cleanup. In other places, such as Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
, the state mandated that a vendor pay for recycled bottles, but left the system in the hands of private industry.
The main vendors of reverse vending machines are Tomra
Tomra
Tomra Systems ASA is a Norwegian company producing, selling and operating reverse vending machines, used to sort and collect empty beverage containers for recycling.The company was founded in 1972 by the brothers Petter and Tore Planke....
of Norway
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
and Wincor Nixdorf
Wincor Nixdorf
Wincor Nixdorf is a German corporation that provides retail and retail banking hardware, software, and services. Wincor Nixdorf is engaged primarily in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems , retail banking equipment, lottery terminals, postal...
of Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
, and Envipco
Envipco
Envipco is a global recycling company. Envipco's corporate headquarters are located in Naugatuck, Connecticut....
of America, Envirobank of Australia and Reverse Vending Corporation.
Operation
The recycler places the empty bottle/can into the receiving aperture; the horizontal in-feed system allows the user to insert containers one at a time. (An alternative system, found in many older machines, is one in which the user opens a door by hand and places the empty container in a pan. When the door is released and closed, the process continues.) The bottle/can is then automatically rotated; the bottle/can is then scanned by an Omnidirectional UPC
Universal Product Code
The Universal Product Code is a barcode symbology , that is widely used in North America, and in countries including the UK, Australia, and New Zealand for tracking trade items in stores. Its most common form, the UPC-A, consists of 12 numerical digits, which are uniquely assigned to each trade item...
Scanner, which scans the beverage container's UPC.
Once a container is scanned, identified (matched to database) and determined to be a participating container, it is processed and typically crushed (for one-time-use Containers) to reduce its size, to avoid spillages of liquid and to increase storage capacity. Refillable containers are collected and sorted by hand to be brought back to the bottling company. The machines can use material recognition instead of/as well as a bar code scanner when needed.