The recycling industry is not what you think. Here’s how we fix it

The recycling industry is not what you think. Here’s how we fix it | Hard Reset Podcast Episode #13

Рет қаралды 8,404

Күн бұрын

How much of our recycling actually gets recycled? Robots could help boost the percentage of recycled trash with near-perfect accuracy.
Listen on Spotify ► open.spotify.com/show/1vmm4a8...
Listen on Apple ► podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Listen on Pandora ► www.pandora.com/podcast/hard-...
Listen on Google Podcasts ► bit.ly/hard-reset-podcast
Watch the original episode on AMP Robotics here ► • The robot solving Amer...
An estimated 32% of the recycling we send off to sorting centers actually gets recycled. Why is this? The nature of sorting recycling by hand is time consuming, messy, and dangerous, and the human error involved in this process is enormous.
Enter AMP Robotics, a Denver-based company training neural networks to speed through sorting plastic and paper with 99% accuracy by recognizing materials on a moving belt.
This robotic tech could usher in a new era of sustainability, allowing us to better sort recycling in order to reuse the same items that were once fated for the landfill.
00:00 Welcome to the Hard Reset Podcast
00:54 What makes this tech a Hard Reset?
06:08 What could make this fully a Hard Reset, rather than just an incremental change?
06:40 How do people get involved in improving the process?
12:10 What is the innovation that allowed this tech to be developed?
15:28 Where is Amazon within the recycling process?
19:26 How does AMP Robotics sell this tech?
21:18 Can the AMP robot be fooled?
35:00 What was the audience response to this episode?
39:00 What were the meanest comments we got on this episode?
Watch on Freethink.com ► www.freethink.com/series/hard...
◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠
Read more of our stories on recycling:
New lithium recycling method is cleaner and cheaper
►www.freethink.com/energy/lith...
Batteries made from recycled metal coming to US
►www.freethink.com/energy/lith...
New process could make plastic recycling more profitable
►www.freethink.com/energy/plas...
◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡
Watch our original series:
► Hard Reset: • Hard Reset by Freethink
► Future of Cities: • Future of Cities
► Just Might Work: • Just Might Work by Fre...
► Challengers: • Challengers by Freethink
◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠◠
About Freethink
No politics, no gossip, no cynics. At Freethink, we believe the daily news should inspire people to build a better world. While most media is fueled by toxic politics and negativity, we focus on solutions: the smartest people, the biggest ideas, and the most ground breaking technology shaping our future.
◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡◡
Enjoy Freethink on your favorite platforms:
► Daily editorial features: www.freethink.com/?...
► Solutions-based stories, straight to your inbox: www.freethink.com/subscribe/?...
► Facebook: / freethinkmedia
► Instagram: / freethink
► Twitter: / freethinkmedia
► Join the Freethink forum: / freethinkforum

Пікірлер: 40

@josiahz21 Ай бұрын

Quite a few years back I got in trouble and was given 180 hrs community service. The recycling center has double time so it was a no brainer. I found out from the guy running the place that 75% of what was recycled by civilians goes to the dump. In that town anyway. I watched 1000s of tons of recycling go to a landfill while I put 1000s of brand new recycling bins together. I never felt more useless while being so productive in my whole life.

@calindabrown6744 Ай бұрын

I always question having to clean my recyclables at home because when I am at the mall, and put my dirty container in a recycling bin, no one is cleaning it before it gets to the recycling centre. It would make more sense for the recycling centre to have a system for thorough cleaning before processing because only a part of the stream is going to be coming from homes.

@europeantroll Ай бұрын

And its going to be like eight bins, are you actually going to do that?....laughs in german

@justinwhite2725 Ай бұрын

The city i lived in literally thre the recycling in the landfill because there was nowhere to send it (this was when China stopped accepting recycling from other countries)

@IndigoRichard Ай бұрын

“The incredible drop in the price of GPU’s and that rise in efficiency…” Must be nice living on that timeline… GPU prices have tripled in the past decade as more and more gamers, crypto-miners, ai-developers, nation states, and scalpers fight over the supply.

@dang4937 Ай бұрын

The thing that would make the biggest difference: Separate compost / organic material from the rest of the trash. Wash any organics off the recyclables. This makes it a lot easier for robots to sort, but it also makes it so you can leave the house for a week, come back, and your bin isn't stinking.

@tombh74 Ай бұрын

That is what is done in many places in Europe. In my town Aarhus Denmark we have seperate containers for organics, plastics, paper ect. The organics are used for generation biogas, and then as fertilizers in agriculture. What can't be recycled is burnt in waste-to-energy plants generating electricity and heating water for the district heating system. It is not a cheap solution and without its problems, but it does mean less waste go to landfill.

@deepmalyadas6585 29 күн бұрын

Finally, new episode ! It's been a while, got us all waiting.

@freethink 28 күн бұрын

Thanks for watching, it means the world to us. More Hard Reset OTW 👀

@Willhierkeinennamen 22 күн бұрын

It's so interesting that the algorithm has you 1.9 million subs but only 7k views. Why!?

@Andre-qo5ek Ай бұрын

why was it failed to be mentioned that we need to produce fewer TYPES of container. maintainer design is MOSTLY marketing. we need a less consumerist paradigm

@webbmyers1339 Ай бұрын

How do we get rich? Real estate. Site test cores and make a deal with the EPA about cleanup standards. Buy a landfill on potentially valuable land. Sort/recycle/gassify it at scale until the remainder can be economically shipped away. Then take your profit on the real estate sale.

@ryker369 24 күн бұрын

19:12 I just finished my senior design project on innovative recyclable packaging to replace foam and other non recyclable forms of packaging. The solution my design group and I came to was to use crumpled paper, their are alot of different levels of crumpled paper and many modern packaging products that are essentially just uniformly crumpled paper. My design group settled on using Uline 18 ply cellulose wadding to replace bubble wrap, and paperplus formed paper cushioning to replace foam. We have yet to perform physical testing but according to our technical caluations our proposed packaging should provide just as much protection at a very similar cost (about 15% higher per pound of product).

@ryker369 24 күн бұрын

In addition, the use of purely paper makes the design compostable as well as recyclable.

@10-OSwords Ай бұрын

How bad are landfills? I've heard of landfill islands & land reclamation, I've heard of methane capture which is turned into fuel...Recycling is very complicated, are landfills actually viable in some part as a reclamation tech.?

@YodaWhat 25 күн бұрын

@freethink @Nick Tucker - I totally agree about "the trash problem" needing to be solved for living *in space,* but what you may not know is that in many ways, it will actually be easier *in space.* For instance, *in space* you never have clouds or night to interfere with collecting and concentrating sunlight, which means totally clean energy is plentiful *in space.* As a result, you can use a nearly-universal method of waste disposal that is closely related to how Mother Earth concentrates gold in deposits of quartz: Superheated water. The technical term is "supercritical water," meaning H2O at a temperature above 705°F (374°C) and simultaneously, pressure above 3205 PSI (218 atmospheres, 22100 kPa). Under those conditions, most metals and minerals are dissolved, and all organic materials are _instantly decomposed_ into gases: simple compounds like hydrogen, methane, and carbon dioxide. The dissolved metals and minerals can be separated from each other by gradually reducing the temperature and pressure, causing each type of material to come out of solution at its own characteristic temperature and pressure. We can also do these things here on Earth, but typically don't because it is simpler and cheaper to just bury our waste. However, sunlight can also be captured in concentrated form here on Earth and used to generate supercritical water. _And that is done,_ but the supercritical water is then typically used to drive steam turbines and make electric power... While VAST amounts of sunlight go to waste. There have also been experiments with using natural geothermal heat to drive this and the next process. A related process working at lower temperatures and pressures can convert almost all kinds of organic material into a very nice oil in just a few minutes. See the so-called "Anything into Oil" process which was in the news a few times, some years ago. Regarding "styrofoam" in particular, technically known as Expanded Polystyrene (EPS): The demand for polystyrene (including post-consumer material) is actually very high, but transporting used EPS in the expanded form is typically considered to be uneconomical. A simple answer to that is to dissolve the EPS in a mineral solvent like heptane, gasoline, or acetone. That eliminates the bulkiness caused by the zillions of tiny air bubbles trapped in EPS. But then the solvent has to be removed to recover the polystyrene, which is easily doable, but it requires energy and specialized equipment. Again, that is typically considered to be uneconomical, because the source of the virgin material, crude oil, is still too cheap.

@rowland5951 Ай бұрын

Tesla bot with the AMP sortation software will be a game changer 👏 👌 🙌

@world_still_spins Ай бұрын

In California, many counties only allow triangle 1-4 to be recycled; so why not only sell triangle 1-4, instead of every fastfood container being triangle 5 which "has to go in the trash." Also, the 'labor shortage' is garbage, more like a pay shortage with many companies trying to offer below minimum wage pay. Near Sacramento; living wage needed is $24/hr, CA general min wage is $16/hr, many CA companies try to offer $14, some out of state companies try to offer fed min wage of $7.50 on CA job boards. Though on the other side; for each and every job listing there are dozens of qualified people applying and none getting hired (even to the low wage jobs). There seems to be many disconnects between plastics and recycling, and with people and hiring. There is not a shortage of labor, the homeless and underpaid of many want work.

@trautzz3234 Ай бұрын

Love it. Keep having interesting conversations about problem solving through innovation. They aren't perfect but that's okay, progress is iterative.

@JohnDoe-rp8xn Ай бұрын

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA "does that describe you?" AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

@Andre-qo5ek Ай бұрын

did i miss it... did they mention Wall-E?

@b0ark1ng21 27 күн бұрын

They did

@TheHotshott55 Ай бұрын

19:06 plastic isn't infinitely recyclable, you can only break it down so many times before it's unusable like food grade plastic can't be reused into food grade again it degrades each time

@xyzzy4567 Ай бұрын

Depends on the recycling method. But in terms of most current plastic recycling processes, you’re right, quality degrades. But some newer methods break the plastic down into essentially brand new raw material. But currently this method is not really in commercial use.

@10-OSwords Ай бұрын

Also they're not discussing that normal recycle has a limited use till the particles are too broken down to be used again, they didn't discuss enzyme research, they didn't discuss plasma gasification, they didn't discuss different programs that use things like used tires & can make roads & tons of other small programs like that. This discussion was not very informed.

@wr6293 Ай бұрын

@9:46: “peoples time is more valid than robots time” Is it really? Think about a robot replacing both the person separating the waste at home and the person sorting all the different plastic material from that “Plastic here” bin collection. These robots are used for 2 reasons. - They are (hopefully) more effective and accurate - They are more cost efficient How is the time those two people have at hand because they are either not sorting at all at home or do not have the sorting job at the recycling facility valued? If they have a job that pays more than the costs of recycling or what they earned at the recycling belt - fine. If they get compensated for not having a job by more than they would have earned at that recycling plant - fine. But what “value” do we as a society attach to the time someone has that has no job and income from the same? Or what value do we assign to those “jobs” that people take on in social projects / simply helping out in the neighborhood? Will we value those spending the time they now have at hand with painting or reading or writing or just thinking and debating? So far our society is based on people being an added value to society (and not a burden because they need public funding like welfare to buy food or pay rent) on them to “earn” their living…. Would love to hear your thoughts on this aspect

@anthonyhall7019 Ай бұрын

Wall-eee 😅😅😅😅😅

@Andre-qo5ek Ай бұрын

just remember that every recycling center is different. there is no standardization.

@louiswgr7618 Ай бұрын

I wanna live in Space gneugneugneu

@catdogfishcake Ай бұрын

In my city in the UK a human sorts out my recycling,.. Me, I sort it into the different colour boxes supplied by my local council it is then picked up by the collection people who dump the already sorted materials into their lorry(truck) which has separate hoppers for each material type, I always rinse out containers because it takes no time at all.This is all super easy & requires no robots. There are machines that sort steel from aluminium at the recycling centre that use the super high technology of a magnet to do this & there is a machine that uses a laser to sort the different types of plastic there too, I recycle the plastic film/bags at my local co-op (a supermarket) I compost most of my food waste & some of my plain brown cardboard in my garden although the local council does collect & compost this too. None of this is difficult or time consuming once you have done it a few times.

@BrianHurry Ай бұрын

You're wrong about one thing. Recycling is exactly what I thought it was. I guarantee there's no such thing as plastic recycling.

@Zedprice Ай бұрын

This "the robots get upset with doing our chores" thing is not a real issue. We would have to give the AI those emotions. Emotions don't emerge from consciousness or intelligence. They're a product of parts of animal brains designed to keep us alive. Fear, anger, sadness, happiness, arousal, hunger, etc -- all of these things are primal and present in most animals regardless of intelligence because they direct the animal towards actions that promote survival. AI won't have emotions unless we input those emotions ourselves, and there's no reason to train emotions into a clothes folding or a trash sorting machine.

@mayawhitesparks110 Ай бұрын

A cat enclosed in a plastic bag in a recycling plant was noticed and saved by a human worker, could AI do that?

@josiahz21 Ай бұрын

Absolutely. IR scanners could pick up the heat signature of the cat and stop all the machines.

@josiahz21 Ай бұрын

Absolutely. IR scanners could pick up the cats heat signature and stop the machines.

@billyjones6626 Ай бұрын

You guys have managed to miss the point every single episode. 99 percent purity has nothing to do with the diverwion rate of the incoming stream. Every episode you make contains flaws of this basic sort.