Australian-engineered smart robotic recycling system has soft plastics in the bag

In 2017-18, only six per cent of Australian soft plastic waste was recycled. The rest added to the growing mountain of plastic in landfills around the country. The biggest problem is the lack of an automatic solution to sort soft plastic waste from co-mingled recycling. Vucetic, an Engineers Australia Fellow, explained that this is because soft plastics like bread bags and cling wrap get tangled in machinery, causing equipment failures and contaminating other waste streams. Sydney-based recycling provider iQRenew invited Vucetic's team at the University of Sydney's Centre for IoT and Telecommunications to see the problem first hand, and potentially help them automate their processes.