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TECHNOLOGY NEWS
Sam Kratky, an account executive at the Bay Using AI and robotics can “ideally recover all the
Area, California-based company, said in a July 30 lost material from the MRFs and provide high
webinar that “this problem of feedstock short- quality feedstock to the reclaimers,” Kamat said,
age that we are facing is not going away – and which would “result in a future where the cost
in fact it’s growing.” of recycled PET would be equal to that of virgin
material.”
“The nuances in which material to recover and
how to recycle them is only going to get more Kratky added that the technology has also been
complicated as packaging design and recycling improving. EverestLabs offers remote monitor-
collection evolves and we’re really going to need ing, so “you don’t need to babysit your robots.”
to rely on new technology rather than manual
processes to solve this,” she added. The vision system and image recognition tech-
nology detects each object, then stores that
The webinar, “How to Leverage AI for Feedstock data in a dashboard. EverestLabs’ program, Re-
Management,” also featured Samir Kamat, an cycleOS, can identify more than 50 different ma-
EverestLabs lead solutions engineer. He noted terials, and the team is always working to grow
that demand growth for RPET is far outpacing that number, Kratky said.
supply growth. A 2023 McKinsey and Company
report found that between 2012 and 2022, RPET The data can help MRF operators back up in-
supply grew about 1% per year, while demand vestments, she added, and allow for automat-
increased 4% each year. ic incoming bale audits, helping MRFs pinpoint
where contamination is coming from and im-
AI and robotics can help with many of the cur- proving bale quality.
rent pain points, he said: the inaccuracy and ex- SOURCE – PLASTICS RECYCLING UPDATE
pense of post-collection sorting, manual labor
shortages and high levels of machine downtime
due to failure or contamination.
A new approach to sorting PET and more at MRFs
n automated sorting system uses AI to unnamed facility in the third or fourth quarter of
continuously reprogram itself to remove this year.
Adifferent materials.
“The concept … is this system has a volume of
An autonomous system developed by Bulk Han- material that it’s basically able to continuously
dling Systems is really more of a sorting loop process and extract the different valuable com-
than a sorting line. modities from that stream of material, until it’s
basically extracted everything,” said Thomas
The recycling equipment manufacturer has sold Brooks, chief technology officer for Eugene,
the first of its container sorting loops to a large Ore.-based Bulk Handling Systems (BHS).
waste management company’s Canadian MRF.
The system is expected to come on-line at the The system, which is currently set up to serve as
August 2024 PLASTICS NEWS 79
