New AI innovations solve e-waste.

That’s why Bollegraaf, the world’s biggest builder of recycling plants, and the AI start-up Greyparrot are rolling out artificial intelligence systems for sorting recycling. The companies plan to retrofit thousands of recycling facilities around the world with computers that can analyze and identify every item that passes through a waste plant, they said Wednesday.

“The destiny of a product is decided by this plant,” said Ambarish Mitra, who co-founded Greyparrot. “This is where the highest impact can be made — not in the bins, not in the household, not with consumer education — because this is where the decision is really made about what’s going to happen to that product.”

Putting a dent in recycling

Not much trash — and almost no plastic — actually gets recycled. About a third of U.S. garbage gets recycled or composted, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s most recent estimate, which relies on 2018 data. For plastic, the figure is closer to 5 percent, according to a 2021 report from Greenpeace. The rest goes to landfills and incinerators.

Recycling rates are higher in Europe, where people are more willing to sort their own recycling into different bins for different categories. Americans have shown less enthusiasm for that, according to Barbara Reck, a senior research scientist at the Yale School of the Environment.

To make recycling easier, many U.S. cities don’t ask Americans to separate paper, glass, metal and the many forms of plastic. They just ask people to put anything recyclable into one bin — and let waste plants do the sorting for them.

But waste plants don’t catch everything. Greyparrot has already installed over 100 of its AI trash spotters in about 50 sorting facilities around the world, and Mitra said as much as 30 percent of potentially recyclable material winds up getting lumped in with the trash that’s headed for the landfill.

Failing to recycle means companies have to make more things from scratch, including a lot of plastic from fossil fuels. Also, more waste ends up in landfills and incinerators, which belch greenhouse gases into the atmosphere and pollute their surroundings.

Mitra said putting Greyparrot’s AI tools in thousands of waste plants around the world can raise the percentage of glass, plastic, metal and paper that makes it to recycling facilities. “If we can move the needle by even 5 to 10 percent, that would be a phenomenal outcome on a planetary basis for greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact,” he said.

Cutting contamination would make recycled materials more valuable and raise the chances that companies would use them to make new products, according to Breck. “If the AI and the robots potentially helped to increase the quality of the recycling stream, that’s huge,” she said.

But she said the best way to raise U.S. recycling rates is to persuade more Americans to recycle. “What’s most important is volume,” said Breck, who helps lead the REMADE Institute, a research group backed by the Energy Department. “If somebody is not recycling at all and you can convince them to start, you get higher recycling rates.”