This looks like a tech-demo for the AI company, and not what you would actually want to do for a real recycling centre. Those arms are huge, heavy, and take a l

This looks like a tech-demo for the AI company, and not what you would actually want to do for a real recycling centre. Those arms are huge, heavy, and take a lot of energy to move around. The mechanics of industrial-scale sorting of plastics is a solved problem: drop the waste off a ledge, and blast falling items with puffs of air from a row of nozzles. It's sufficient to nudge items just a little bit so that they fall down a different chute. The #1 problem with recycling is that the cost to manufacture something like an aluminium can is about 5 cents. Recycling it has to be cheaper, otherwise it's a net harm to the environment. For example, if you spend just 10c on energy trucking the waste to a facility, sorting it, remelting it, and making a new can from the molten aluminium, then you've caused 5c more pollution than it would have required to just make a new one! These energy balance equations are brutal. It's crazy difficult to recycle most packaging materials like plastics or aluminium cans cheaply enough to be beneficial. Currently, it's only truly worth it for more expensive metals like copper and steel, especially if they come in a bulk form. That's why you regularly see headlines like "90% of recycling goes into landfill".