Or you can just cut the problem in half overnight by mandating that manufacturers indicate on the packaging whether or not it is recyclable. We already have the recycle logo on the most common items, but as the article indicates, the biggest issue is with people hoping that an item can be recycled and throwing it in the blue bin in earnest optimism. Putting "Please dispose in trash, this item is not able to be recycled" on the container will take you further than any tech solution.
I'm genuinely curious as to which side of the equation you'd like to implement this solution - the consumer who throws the item away or the central sorting center that receives the items? Sure, a metro area sorting center might be interested, but many are government owned and require approval or even a referendum to increase the budget for this type of system. Rural sorting centers have no budget and the most high tech piece of equipment are the metal detectors positioned along conveyors (just before a couple scores of humans who do the actual sorting). You can give people an app to scan an item before they toss it, but that implies they'll actually use it. I want futuristic automated flying trash-sorting robots too, but I also don't think we've exhausted the easier options before jumping right into the high-cost tech solution.
If there was a database that described the recylability of a product, then that could be cross-referenced with what a municipality or waste management company is able to recycle. Pair that with simple app and that would make disposing of certain kinds of waste very clear.
Sort of. Machine vision is helpful, but the more trash in the recycling stream, the more dexterity your processing automation requires to handle non-compliant material, as well as the costs of trashing that non-compliant material.
More emphasis needs to be placed on reducing the waste stream as a whole (trash and recyclables), and then leaning on a recycling lifecycle (with the remaining material disposed of with plasma gasification).
Already working in the most advanced recycling plants. Stadler's latest plant has zero people hand-sorting.[1]
Here's NYC's big plant in Brooklyn.[2] Sill some hand-sorting.
A robotic one from Japan.[3]
It may not be profitable, but it's quite possible to separate just about everything automatically now.
Awesome links, thanks for sharing! I won’t call the technical problem “solved”, but the larger issue is the politics that people think recyclables have suffient value to self-sustain recycling operations, and that isn’t the case. You’re going to have to pay for both your trash and recyclables to be disposed of, you’ll just pay less for the recyclables.
Still it seems like this would be a great automation problem to work on - not your standard shiny tech problem but something that would really make a difference.