Robots can identify recyclable materials by recognizing patterns in colors, textures, shapes and logos. Ever wondered what happens to the recyclables you carefully sort and place in your bin? For years, recycling has been a crucial part of our efforts to reduce waste and protect the environment. However, the recycling industry has faced significant challenges, from rising costs to labor shortages. But what if technology could transform this process, making recycling faster, more efficient and actually effective?

In this episode, Abate flew to Denver, Colorado, to get a behind-the-scenes look at the future of recycling with Joe Castagneri, the head of AI at Amp Robotics.

In this episode, Abate flew to Denver, Colorado, to get a behind-the-scenes look at the future of recycling with Joe Castagneri, the head of AI at Amp Robotics. With Materials Recovery Facilities (MRFs) processing a staggering 25 tons of trash per hour, robotic sorting is the clear long-term solution. Recycling is a for-profit industry. When the margins don't make sense, the items will not be recycled. This is why Amp's mission to use robotics and AI to bring down the cost of recycling and increase the number of items that can be sorted for recycling is so impactful.

AMP Robotics is a leader in the recycling technology industry, building AI-based robotics systems that sort recyclable materials and waste at a fraction of the cost of current technology. AMP's technology recovers recyclables from municipal waste, precious commodities from electronic waste, and high-value materials from construction and demolition debris. They turned to CloudFactory when growth outpaced internal capacity to annotate quality data. Our managed workforce led quality control efforts for AMP's data labeling efforts while supporting model outputs and defining new segments.

AMP installed its first AI-guided robotics systems in the UK and Ireland with Recyco in September 2021 and has since deployed more recycling solutions throughout Europe, including at FCC Medio Ambiente/Environment in Spain. "As we continue to scale our business and innovate new ways to improve the economics of recycling, we're committed to the European market and our growing customer base there. Our efforts to modernise Europe's recycling infrastructure are important to our global investors, and critical to realising our vision of a world without waste," said Matanya Horowitz, founder and CEO of AMP Robotics. AMP has grown its team to include sales support, training, service, and marketing, in addition to direct sales staff focused on serving Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and Switzerland, along with the UK and Ireland. Our AI platform, AMP Neuron, continues to achieve breakthroughs in data accuracy and classification of different polymers, form factors, and other packaging types, which is helping our customers take a more data-driven approach to increasing recovery, lowering costs, and optimising operations," said Gary Ashburner, general manager, Europe, for AMP Robotics.

AMP Robotics has extended its partnership with Evergreen, a producer of food-grade recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET). Evergreen now has 15 of AMP's robotic sorting systems installed or planned across three facilities. In addition to six robots in Clyde, Evergreen has added six in Riverside, California, and will soon add three in Albany, New York. AMP's technology identifies and sorts green and clear PET from post-consumer bales of plastic soft drink bottles at speeds up to three times faster and at a higher accuracy than manual sorters can achieve. Evergreen then recycles the material into reusable flakes or pellets, which it sells to end markets as feedstock for new containers and packaging.

AMP installed its first robotic sorting system in Europe at the end of 2020. The official distributor of AMP in Poland is Agrex-Eco, a comprehensive waste management service provider that has been operating in this market for 30 years.

Globally, AMP has estimated that more than USD 200 billion worth of recyclable materials goes unrecovered annually. The economics and efficiency of identifying and sorting paper, plastics, metals, and other recyclables from the waste stream creates a major challenge for material recovery. In recent years, the waste industry has also faced stricter international quality standards for contamination-free imports of recyclable materials, leaving the industry in search of cost-effective ways to meet these requirements. AMP's technologies allow more recyclables to be captured from waste streams, producing a greater volume of high-purity secondary resources. In one recycling centre in Virginia that installed the technology, the volume of recycled material increased by 10%.

The world is a gigantic landfill! Everyday tons of waste are generated from various households, hospitals, industries, construction and demolition sites and more. While today we have numerous ways to get rid of the accumulated waste, it still ends up affecting the safety and sustainability of the ecological system. Therefore, the best alternative is to reuse and recycle as much waste as possible. And offering an extra pair of hand in this are waste sorting and recycling robots.

AMP Robotics, the recycling robotics technology developer backed by investors including Sequoia Capital and Sidewalk Infrastructure Partners, is close to closing on as much as $70 million in new financing, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the company's plans. The new financing speaks to AMP Robotics' continued success in pilot projects and with new partnerships that are exponentially expanding the company's deployments. Earlier this month the company announced a new deal that represented its largest purchase order for its trash sorting and recycling robots. That order, for 24 machine learning-enabled robotic recycling systems with the waste handling company Waste Connections, was a showcase for the efficacy of the company's recycling technology. That comes on the back of a pilot program earlier in the year with one Toronto apartment complex, where the complex's tenants were able to opt into a program that would share recycling habits monitored by AMP Robotics with the building's renters in an effort to improve their recycling behavior.