The biodegradable design could help keep plastic from becoming fish food. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. Chances are sushi aficionados have left a restaurant take-out in tow and with a handful of adorable, but environmentally problematic, fish-shaped soy sauce packets. These single-use plastic " shoyu-tai " drip bottles are as iconic as they are convenient, but their small size and disposability mean they often end up sliding down sinks and into drains. Once in the big blue, they slowly break down into microplastics that are then eaten by fish .

A brand new partnership goals to take an enormous chew out of the scourge of single-use plastic. With the assistance of some robots and economies of scale, it is a constructive step in an issue that appears wholly intractable. Compostable packaging firm Zume, which has innovated the manufacture of excessive output molded fiber packaging utilizing robots, is becoming a member of forces with sustainable packaging firm Transcend Packaging. By becoming a member of forces, the businesses try to rally an efficient base of capabilities and distribution to tackle the unfathomable may of the plastics business. At the moment, single-use plastic is a $320B business.

You might not notice it, but you've likely adopted artificial intelligence into your daily life. It can be as simple as personalizing your news feeds, searching for products on shopping sites or voice-to-text conversion on smartphones. It can also be applied to more sophisticated tasks like predicting court outcomes in cases involving employment law or used for robotic welding applications. The transformative power of AI is also an economic growth driver, which is why the Canadian government has given the green light to advancing the country's AI strategy. According to a recent announcement from Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry François-Philippe Champagne, more than $443 million in Budget 2021 is designated for the second phase of the pan-Canadian Artificial Intelligence Strategy.

From 7 a.m. until well past dusk, seven days a week, N. Sudhakar sits behind the counter of his hole-in-the wall grocery store in the south Indian city of Bangalore. It's a carbon copy of the roughly 12 million family-run "kiranas" found on almost every street corner in India. The shop is on a busy street in the Whitefield district, formerly a quiet suburb but now a major hub for the city's booming IT industry. Apartment blocks loom behind his shop, housing hundreds of workers employed in the tech parks that dominate the surrounding area. These days, the same technology industry that helped Sudhakar's business thrive is presenting stores like his with a new challenge.

Greg Nichols covers robotics, AI, and AR/VR for ZDNet. A full-time journalist and author, he writes about tech, travel, crime, and the economy for global media outlets and reports from across the U. Robots are getting in on the effort to curb our addiction to single-use plastics. A new partnership between one of the largest industrial robotics manufacturers and a compostable packaging company points the way to an efficient and cost-effective green packaging revolution. ABB Robotics has signed an agreement to collaborate with California-based Zume, which makes the compostable packaging that's becoming more commonplace as an alternative to plastics. ABB's robotic cells will help Zume speed up and scale production of 100% compostable packaging made from plant-based agricultural material.