4 ms·
This article makes it sound like the main bottleneck in the first-run recycling process is sorting. Could anyone with knowledge around ML, robotics and the lik
by cribbles 6y ago
This article makes it sound like the main bottleneck in the first-run recycling process is sorting.
Could anyone with knowledge around ML, robotics and the like chime in on napkin math around novel labor-reducing approaches to improving the operating economics here? From the sound of it, this is not really a solvable problem short of some leapfrog technological advance.
Even then, you don’t want to spend more energy on sorting automation than you get back from the recycling. And this would only make sense if the diminishing returns after the first or second recycle made it reasonable to be issuing so many consumer plastics in the first place.
- David 6y agoA friend and former boss of mine founded CleanRobotics which makes the TrashBot, a trash can that sorts trash from recyclables: https://cleanrobotics.com/trashbot/ https://cleanrobotics.com/trashbot/ I haven't seen the output so I can't comment on how well they work firsthand, but the idea is pretty cool. As far as I know (which is not far) they don't attempt to sort recyclables by material, unfortunately.
- mulmen 6y agoIf this is possible why not just have a "plastic" bin and then transport everything mixed and sort at the recycling facility? What's the benefit to deploying all these sorting machines everywhere? Do they go to different locations?
- thu2111 6y agoThere are quite a few companies doing that, but the ones I've seen are for industrial waste streams. e.g. https://youtu.be/QbKA9uNgzYQ?t=41 https://youtu.be/QbKA9uNgzYQ?t=41