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Can AI Recycling Robots Solve the Waste Crisis?

Posted on by dishanth
Can AI Recycling Robots Solve the Waste Crisis?

Our global waste crisis is enormous, with billions of tons of trash generated each year, and much of it ending up in landfills instead of being recycled. A major reason recycling rates remain low is actually the extreme difficulty of efficiently sorting and separating the complex jumble of materials in our waste streams. But what if AI recycling robots could take over this dull, dirty, and dangerous work from human sorters? That’s the ambitious vision of EverestLabs, a startup aiming to totally transform recycling as we know it.

 

AI Recycling Robots Faster, Smarter

EverestLabs was founded in 2020 by a team of engineers and technologists from Apple, Google, NVIDIA, and other leading tech companies. They’re on a mission to bring the power of artificial intelligence, computer vision, and advanced robotics to tackle the massive challenges facing global recycling efforts. Imagine conveyor belts loaded with trash of all types, with sophisticated robotic arms directed by AI rapidly grabbing items and precisely sorting them into different bins for recycling.

RecycleOS is an AI recycling robot operating system for recycling plants that uses vision technology, robotics, and data analytics to improve the efficiency and accuracy of recycling. It uses 3D depth-sensing cameras to identify recyclable materials like plastics, metals, and paper. The system then uses robotic arms to sort the materials into different bins. RecycleOS also uses data analytics to track the system’s performance and identify improvement areas.

RecycleOS is designed to be more efficient and accurate than traditional manual sorting methods. It is being used in a variety of places, including recycling centers, manufacturing plants, and retail stores. The company has also partnered with a number of major companies, such as Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble, to deploy AI recycling robots.

  • Coca-Cola: EverestLabs and Coca-Cola have partnered to deploy RecycleOS at a number of Coca-Cola bottling plants in the United States. The goal of the partnership is to improve the efficiency and accuracy of recycling at Coca-Cola’s plants.
  • Procter & Gamble: EverestLabs and Procter & Gamble have partnered to deploy RecycleOS at a number of Procter & Gamble manufacturing plants in the United States. The partnership aims to improve the efficiency and accuracy of recycling at Procter & Gamble’s plants.

In addition to Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble, EverestLabs has also partnered with a number of other major companies, including:

  • PepsiCo
  • Kraft Heinz
  • Walmart
  • Target
  • Unilever

It may sound futuristic, but EverestLabs AI recycling robots are already built and working. As prototypes, they can sort the waste at speeds no human worker could match. The AI recycling robot system can consistently achieve over 90% accuracy across dozens of material categories like plastics, paper, electronics, and metals. That leads to much purer recycled material streams that retain their value.

 

Potentially Huge Business Scale

EverestLabs is running pilot projects with major waste haulers and recyclers to prove the AI recycling robot solution. They’ve also raised $16 million in venture funding to hire engineers and scientists across AI, computer vision, and robotics disciplines to turn the technology into commercial-ready products. The founders envision their automated recycling concept eventually operating 24/7 at massive scales, processing waste volumes human sorters could never handle.

Adoption faces challenges, from high upfront costs to reluctance by old-school waste companies to change. But the sheer size of the opportunity makes EverestLabs hard to ignore. The environmental payoffs would be enormous if advanced intelligent automation could boost global recycling rates and economics. Untold millions of tons of usable materials could be recovered rather than dumped or incinerated.

As urbanization intensifies globally, solving the waste crisis is increasingly urgent. EverestLabs and other startups applying cutting-edge tech see huge potential for robots and AI algorithms to handle the waste sorting that humans simply cannot physically achieve. Autonomous recycling may even protect thousands of vulnerable workers from hazardous manual labor. The future remains uncertain, but companies like EverestLabs show how emerging technologies could positively disrupt even our most entrenched industrial systems.

 

 

 

 

Source   Happy Eco News

Investors Worth $5 Trillion Set Major Emissions Reduction Targets

Posted on by dishanth
Investors Worth $5 Trillion Set Major Emissions Reduction Targets

Thirty of the world’s largest investors, who together control $5 trillion in assets, have pledged to cut the greenhouse gas emissions of their portfolios by as much as 29 percent in five years.

The investors, who include Allianz, the Church of England and the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, are all part of the UN convened Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance. The group formed in 2019 with the goal of reducing the emissions of their investment portfolios to net zero by 2050 and limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. On the road to that goal, the group announced their 2025 Target Setting Protocol Tuesday, which includes the goal to reduce emissions across members’ portfolios by 16 to 29 percent of 2019 levels by 2025.

“According to the UNEP Emissions Gap Report, every year of postponed emissions peak means that deeper and faster cuts will be required,” UN Environment Programme Finance Initiative leader Eric Usher said in a press release. “The Target-Setting Protocol represents world-leading progress on the required emissions reductions from some of the biggest investors in the world.”

To reach their goal, the investors will pinpoint the 20 companies most responsible for their portfolios’ emissions, The Guardian explained. They will also set specific targets for highly emitting sectors like oil and gas, transport and utilities.

Some financial institutions have acted on the climate crisis by divesting entirely from certain companies or refusing to fund certain ventures. For example, Norway’s largest private asset manager divested in August from companies that lobby against climate action or make more than five percent of their revenue from coal or oil sands. The Net-Zero Asset Owners Alliance, however, takes a different approach, seeking instead to engage with the companies it invests in in order to push the overall economy towards a just transition to renewable energy.

“Although decarbonization of portfolios could be easily achieved by selling carbon intensive investments, it is highly questionable if such actions alone would have a positive impact on the real economy,” the group explained in the press release. “Additionally, it might undermine Alliance members ability to engage with these [companies] to effect reductions in the real economy.”

Part of that engagement means encouraging companies to share regular reports on their climate actions and to craft plans to green their business, according to The Guardian. The alliance itself will also release yearly reports, and plans to grow its membership to 200 or the assets under its control to $25 trillion.

“Alliance members start out by changing themselves and then reach out to various companies to work on the change of their businesses,” Alliance Chair Günther Thallinger, who serves on the board of management for Allianz SE, said in the press release. “Reaching net-zero is not simply reducing emissions and carrying on with the business models of today. There are profound changes and opportunities that will come from the net-zero economy, we see new business opportunities and strong wins for those who are ready to lead.”

The alliance is part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s (UNFCCC’s) broader Race to Zero campaign, in which cities, companies and investors work to increase the number of entities that have committed to net-zero emissions by 2050 or earlier, Business Green reported. The plan is to have as many as possible commit before the next major UN climate summit, the delayed COP26.

 

 

By Olivia Rosane

Source: EcoWatch