Several exciting new projects have taken root globally in the recycling industry involving robotics and artificial intelligence (AI). From large-scale (entire factories) to individual machines, these improvements in the industry will greatly increase the recycling rate of urban waste and help our world transition to a more sustainable lifestyle.

One of the challenges of recycling is sorting, especially if citizens do not pre-sort items and throw everything into a trash can. This is where intelligent robots are most useful. If a machine can load trucks with mixed waste types and sort them all for recycling, it will be a game changer. This is what they did in Norway!

The Norwegian waste company "Renovasjon i Grenland" has reached an agreement with the resource management company Geminor to treat up to 35,000 tons of residual waste within five years. It will sort garbage in one of Scandinavia's newest robotic sorting plants, where machines can divide everything into several recyclable parts. Better classification can make better use of materials!

Leif Neverdahl, Geminor project leader and customer and development manager, explained:

Before detailed sorting in the robotic sorting plant, the garbage is transported to Bjorstaddalen by gas trucks: infrared sensors and grippers are used to separate waste such as wood, cardboard, stone, metal, plastic, and ceramics into different parts. Therefore, out of the 7,000 tons of garbage each year, only about 2,000 tons of residual garbage cannot be recycled.

The use of robotic sorting equipment has many advantages. First of all, robotic sorting will produce completely pure and clean parts, thereby improving the final disposal of materials-whether it is waste for material recovery or energy recovery. Secondly, our goal is to increase the recovery rate while improving the quality of the distillate used to produce new products. Therefore, robotic sorting is a sustainable choice for our waste disposal.

Sindre Hauen, CEO of Bjorstaddalen Næring AS added:

The robot factory performs 6000 picks per hour and can be “trained” to sort all important pieces for recycling. The sensor technology is unique and can recognize shapes, colors and materials. If new market opportunities arise—even regulations—the system can be trained to recognize new scores. We want to be a leader in robotic sorting, so we are always looking for better waste management solutions.

At the same time, London-based waste technology company Recycleye uses advanced artificial intelligence robots to turn waste into resources in the UK. It recently raised £3.5 million in seed funding, and its total budget has reached £4.7 million since it was founded in 2019 by CEO Victor Dewulf and CTO Peter Hedley.

The company will use the money to train "the world's most powerful recycling robot" to prevent valuable recyclables from being lost due to "inefficient and inefficient" manual labor. According to data from the World Bank, 2 billion tons of garbage are generated every year. Therefore, the recent IPCC (UN) Climate Change Report emphasized that increasing recycling is one of our “most pressing global challenges”.

These super machines will enable recycling facilities to increase the speed, purity and subsequent value of their output. The company stated that they will increase the resale value of the bundles by a factor of five! In addition, by reducing operating expenses, they can save up to £2 million in facilities each year.

CEO Victor Dewulf is a former investment banker at Goldman Sachs and later received a PhD. Gain the skills needed to solve recycling problems in machine vision. He said:

When the cost of recycling exceeds the value of the sorted materials, the waste will not be recycled. By using artificial intelligence and robotics to reduce recycling costs, we are breaking this threshold and building a world where our removal chain is fully integrated back into the supply chain.

Surprisingly, the waste management industry is inefficient and relies on outdated manual processes. Therefore, in order to ensure that our team understands the pain of manual picking and the need to replace it with technology, we take them to retreat to garbage dumps across Europe. We are very happy to be supported by Promus Ventures, a venture capital company that has a good track record in supporting and expanding deep technology companies with ideas that change the world like ours.

Recycleye Vision has been installed at the Aldridge plant in Biffa to automate the quality assessment process. It classifies individual items on the PET, HDPE and PP production lines.

Mick Davis, Chief Operating Officer of Biffa Resources and Energy said:

This technology allows us to better understand the waste we are collecting and optimize factory processes. From discovering hazardous materials that can damage machines to identifying indicators that can improve work patterns, artificial intelligence technology can help change our waste screening and sorting methods. This is not only a positive step forward for Biffa, our employees and customers, but it is also good for the environment and the government’s increased recycling rate targets.

Another machine put on the market is Green Machine's i-BOT robotic sorter. This is a more economical but efficient design, equipped with dual high-speed sorting arms and two vision system options. Each unit can be picked up 100 times per minute, and up to 6 units can be installed continuously and connected under a programmable logic controller and AI software system. The factory can install the robot system on a 30-inch to 72-inch wide conveyor belt, and each robot arm can select two different products.

China's Unilever's Jumping Dazhou and Alibaba Group have teamed up to try out sorters that support artificial intelligence to maintain a plastic circular economy. As part of a joint initiative called "Waste-Free World", they launched a large-scale closed-loop plastic recycling system-part of Unilever's initiative to fundamentally eliminate the root causes of plastic waste and dispose of packaging in different ways . In addition, it is also in line with the Shanghai Municipal Government's plan to establish a plastic packaging management system that can be used nationwide to promote a circular economy.

Jet Jing, Vice President of Alibaba Group, said:

Alibaba is supporting Unilever to make it easier for Chinese consumers to embrace on our multiple cross-platforms (including Alipay, Tmall, Ele.me and Tmall Supermarket) by creating a closed-loop plastic recycling scene from the beginning of purchase Responsible consumption, for recycling and repurchase.

As part of the pilot program, 20 recycling machines were installed when No Waste World launched its office and community spaces in Shanghai and Hangzhou, the two largest cities in China. Thanks to its most advanced artificial intelligence technology, the machine can automatically identify various plastic bottles.

To use this machine, customers open their Alipay app-Alibaba's e-wallet service-scan the QR code displayed on the machine's screen, and then put the bottle in the recycling bin. Individuals can earn green energy points for every bottle deposited in the Trash World Machine on Alipay Ant Forest and Unilever coupons.

Alipay Ant Forest was launched in 2016 as a reward system that provides consumers with green energy points for low-carbon activities. They can then use the collected points to protect protected areas or plant trees. Since the start of the project, Ant Forest has partnered with non-governmental organizations in China's arid regions to help plant more than 200 million trees.

For companies, artificial intelligence-based recycling equipment, waste-free world logistics and plastic processing make the recycling economy of plastic waste possible. The machine can pre-classify plastic packaging into various grades, thereby simplifying the process and improving the quality and value of recycled plastic bottles. This means that the reuse of materials can be more efficient, thereby better promoting a circular economy.

Rohit Jawa, Executive Vice President of Unilever North Asia, said:

Plastic has its place, but it should not cause environmental pollution. By 2025, we will absolutely reduce the use of plastic by 100,000 tons, promote the use of recyclable plastic, halve the amount of virgin plastic we use for packaging, and help collect and process more plastic packaging than we sell. We believe that the waste-free world jointly launched with Alibaba Group will become the "green engine" of China's plastic packaging circular economy.

Thanks to robots, Unilever is getting closer and closer to its sustainability goals: to reduce plastic packaging by more than 100,000 tons by 2025, halve the use of virgin plastics, and accelerate the use of recycled plastics.