[gloriana]

The consumer sorting is often not very good and requires multiple bins with a higher capital and operating cost for storage and collection. It's a pain for the users. Single stream trash is the way to go with robotic sorting is the way to go. No reason it can't scale. Amazing work, one of the best uses of labeling and machine vision I've seen to date.

[mistrial9]

I have experience in commercial recycling and was about to post something with dim details, but this comment says what I was about to say roughly. It is hard to read comments from people with good intentions but zero experience in commercial recycling. Single-stream versus household sort is one of the most basic choices of any municipal recycling program. Every operation has waste, flaws and mistakes, single stream or not.

Excellent human sorting as you find in Japan or Switzerland is rare. Of course it is desirable. Pre-sorted inputs are not perfect in those jurisdictions, and rare in most other places.

The comment above lauds the technology here and I agree. Sorting a recycling line is a terrible kind of job for the majority of adults, and economics make the implementation worse in many cases. De-facto, it is the handicapped, children, prisoners and starving people that sort trash in most of the world. 1st world machinery with the right economics are an improvement in almost all cases, especially where food waste might be involved.

[jamal-kumar]

I'm wondering what happens to the woman who collects bottles in my neighborhood for her son's wheelchair when this technology comes to the third world.

That said the local garbage dump is encroaching on a refugee settlement, if it was something that could help it encroach less on that maybe it's a good thing.

Lots of factors here.

[PakG1]

It's not necessarily a pain for the users. It's a cultural thing. If you can change the culture, it's easy to do it with humans at the source. I'm in South Korea now and they sort all the garbage before even throwing it out. Different bins for different types of plastic, styrofoam, tetra pak containers, cardboard, glass, organic waste, etc. My brother-in-law, his kids, and I will take the garbage down and put it all into the right bin. No complaining, everyone thinks it's the proper thing to do. Makes it super easy to process each type of garbage correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recycling_in_South_Korea

South Korea didn't do it this way in the beginning. When I was in China a couple of years ago, they were just starting to process their garbage this way, though it'll take a while for them to really do it well. The interesting question is why it's so hard to get the west to handle things this way. I don't know Europe, they might be better, but I know North America, and wow, the people in North America really don't care about this kind of stuff in general.

[IshKebab]

Of course it's a pain. Just because they're used to it doesn't mean they like it. Having that many different bins is obviously inconvenient.

[PakG1]

Again, I'm not sure of that. They feel that it's the proper thing to do, so I'm not sure they view it as painful. I hate to say it, but it feels like a disparity of maturity. Some kids do their chores because they're responsible kids, take their responsibilities seriously, are proud of being responsible, and view kids who aren't similarly responsible as immature. Other kids hate their chores and do their chores in spite of their hate. Both kids are facing obligations, but their emotional reactions are different.

[IshKebab]

It's nothing to do with maturity, don't be patronising. They feel that it's the proper thing to do because it is the proper thing to do if you don't have good centralised sorting.

If you do then centralised sorting is clearly better all round. It's less work for people, collection is simplified and more efficient, you don't have issues with people missorting, you can sort into more categories, etc. etc.

[PakG1]

So nobody in the world has good centralised sorting. That's our reality. So what does that imply then as to people not wanting to deal with the pain of presorting? You say that it's the proper thing to do in that reality. I'm welcome to using a word other than maturity to describe the phenomenon if you can suggest one. I'm not married to that word.

[IshKebab]

> So nobody in the world has good centralised sorting. That's our reality.

Yes. That's what people are trying to solve.

But that's irrelevant. Your original comment was claiming that manual sorting isn't a pain because it's the proper thing to do. That's just nonsense. It's the proper thing to do (for now) but it's also a pain.

Would you have said washing clothes wasn't a pain in the 1800s? It's basically the same thing. Something annoying that you have to do because the technology to do it automatically hasn't been invented yet.