Technological innovation revolutionizes recycling

Given the urgent need to reduce our waste production, recycling has become a major challenge for our societies. Fortunately, many technological innovations are emerging to meet this challenge and optimize sorting, recycling and materials recovery processes.

From artificial intelligence to advanced chemical processes, here’s an overview of the latest advances that are helping to improve recycling rates and the quality of recycled materials.

Artificial intelligence for waste sorting

One of the main innovations shaking up the recycling sector is artificial intelligence (AI). Thanks to image recognition and classification algorithms, AI makes it possible to automate and optimize waste sorting processes, a crucial step for efficient recovery.

Optical sorting systems equipped with AI are capable of identifying the nature of the different materials present in a waste stream (plastics, metals, glass, etc.) with great precision, and separating them with far greater reliability than traditional manual or mechanical methods.

Thanks to machine learning, AI algorithms achieve recognition rates of over 95% for most types of waste. This not only improves sorting yields, but also helps preserve the purity of material streams, which is essential for recycling.

Beyond optical sorting, AI also has applications in sorting by detecting the physico-chemical properties of waste, such as density or electrical conductivity. Sensors coupled with AI algorithms enable the precise separation of different plastic polymers, a major challenge for recycling.