Recycling plants begin to install artificial intelligence systems to detect garbage

2024-02-12 07:30:04

The world’s largest recycling plant builder has partnered with a startup to install AI-powered systems to sort recycling, informa el Washington Post. And now, in the coming years, “companies plan to retrofit thousands of recycling facilities around the world with computers that can analyze and identify every item that passes through a waste plant, they said Wednesday.” “Separate” Recyclable Materials , particularly plastic, end up contaminated with other forms of trash, according to Lokendra Pal, a professor of sustainable materials engineering at North Carolina State University… Waste plants don’t catch everything.

[La startup de IA] Greyparrot has already installed more than 100 of its AI garbage detectors in approximately 50 sorting facilities around the world, and [el cofundador Ambarish] Mitra said up to 30 percent of potentially recyclable material ends up bundled with trash. that’s headed to the landfill. Not recycling means companies have to make more things from scratch, including a lot of plastic from fossil fuels. In addition, more and more waste ends up in landfills and incinerators, which release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and pollute the environment.

Mitra said placing Greyparrot’s AI tools in thousands of waste plants around the world can increase the percentage of glass, plastic, metal and paper that reaches recycling facilities. “If we can move the needle even 5 to 10 percent, it would be a phenomenal outcome on a planetary level for greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact,” he said. According to Reck, reducing pollution would make recycled materials more valuable and increase the chances that companies will use them to make new products. “If AI and robots potentially helped increase the quality of the recycling stream, that’s huge,” he said…The

Greyparrot’s device is basically a set of visual and infrared cameras connected to a computer, which monitors the trash as it moves. passes over a conveyor belt and labels it in 70 categories, from loose bottle caps (not recyclable!) to books (sometimes recyclable!) to aluminum cans (recyclable!). Waste plants could connect these AI systems to sorting robots to help them separate trash from recyclables more accurately. They could also use AI as a quality control system to measure how well they separate trash from recyclables. That could help plant managers modify their assembly lines to recover more recyclables or verify that a package of recyclables is free of contaminants, allowing them to sell them at a higher price.
GreyParrot’s co-founder said its litter-detection computers “could one day help regulators crack down on companies that produce tsunamis of non-recyclable packaging,” according to the article.

“AI systems are so precise, he said, that they can identify brands on individual items. ‘There could be information that makes them more accountable for… the commitments they made to the public or to shareholders,’ he said.”