Innovations in Recycling – New Methods & Technologies for Cleaner Cities

The world generates about 2.24 billion tons of municipal solid waste each year, and the current trend suggests that the figure is not slowing down any time soon. However, tomorrow’s cities must adopt a responsible approach to production, consumption, and waste disposal to meet the world’s zero-waste initiatives.

Thankfully, several innovations in recycling are already helping cities tow the path of maintaining a cleaner environment. Here are some important innovations in recycling to minimize the amount of waste that ends up in landfills and waterways.

Smart Waste Bins

Traditional recycling and waste management methods are riddled with lots of inefficiencies, like manual sorting of recyclables. Besides, many people usually don’t bother to sort their waste; they simply dump everything in the same bin.

Smart waste bins, a cost-effective smart waste management technology, automatically sort recyclables using object recognition technology built on artificial intelligence (AI). This eliminates human error, leading to faster processing time and easy processing in recycling facilities.

In addition to increasing efficiency, this innovation can significantly lower waste management costs.

Example Companies

1. Bigbelly, United States: A leading smart waste and recycling company that makes solar-powered waste and recycling stations equipped with sensors to communicate status in real time.
2. Bin-e, Poland: This company produces AI-based smart bins for collecting waste and recyclables in public places.

Chemical Recycling

Using virgin raw material in manufacturing often results in carbon emission that impacts the environment, hampers biodiversity, and leads to leaching. Unfortunately, even a conventional recycling process produces the same effect.

However, innovations in recycling have brought about chemical recycling, a process that breaks down recyclables into their building blocks, resulting in secondary raw materials while minimizing hazardous emissions.

Unlike conventional methods, chemical recycling does not degrade the quality of the recycled material, meaning it can be used in high-value applications.

With chemical recycling, manufacturers can meet the sustainable development goals of using secondary raw materials in production.

Example Companies

1. Plastic Back, Isreal: This company recycles plastic waste using chemical oxidization and a decentralized plastic recycling approach that allows recyclers to easily treat plastic waste at pickup sites.
2. Refiberd, United States: This company recycles post-consumer textile waste into new threads using a combination of propriety green chemical recycling technology, AI, and robotics.

Green Waste Management

Food waste is a major contributing factor to greenhouse gas emissions. Existing statistics suggest that the carbon footprint of food waste is equivalent to the third largest emitting country in the world (if food waste was a country).

Thankfully, innovative and advanced recycling technologies and facilities are at the forefront of developing solutions to divert food or organic waste and raw material from landfills. Green waste management companies recycle organic waste into high-value materials like methane and other stabilized organic compounds. A typical example is composite facilities that upcycle green waste into fertilizers and biofuel.

Example Companies

1. Biovert Protein, Thailand: Converts food waste into fertilizers, animal feed, and high-fat oil.
2. BicyCompost, France: A bio-waste company that collects and converts organic waste into compost for distribution to local farmers partnering with the company.

IoT-Enabled Recycling

Smart city companies leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) technology to develop smart waste management and recycling systems. IoT-enabled sensors like fill-level sensors allow waste collectors and recyclers to know exactly when to pick up the waste. This way, recyclers can schedule tasks based on waste generation frequency in real-time instead of sticking with periodic workflows that are usually too early or late.

Over time, the data gathered using IoT-based technology gives recyclers insight into waste generation behavior, allowing each recycling facility to optimize operational efficiency.

Example Companies

1. Smartbin.io, United States: This company develops smart waste collection bins for businesses, with each bin featuring sensors that offer insight into the various waste types generated.
2. Bintel, Sweden: Develops fill-level sensors for recycling stations, trash bins, and containers. The sensors increase visibility into waste bin status and enable recyclers to optimize waste and recycle pickup frequency.

Recycling Robots

While mechanical recycling converts waste into secondary raw material without significantly affecting the structure of the material, the process can be quite expensive. To solve this problem, companies use recycling robots powered by AI technology to sort and process waste.

This is one of the innovations in recycling that completely removes human error, increases processing speeds, and improves efficiency. Processing facilities that use this technology have better waste stream quality control and see significant reductions in overall operational expenses.

Example Companies

1. Ursa Robotics, United Kingdom: Manufactures automated waste collection containers that effectively replace garbage trucks and public bins.
2. 2BO, United States: This company develops robots that effectively sort and process waste (including co-mingled materials) using AI, IoT-based technology, and robotics.

Waste Valorization Solutions

Unlike conventional recycling, smart recycling facilities use chemical and biological methods like waste valorization to upcycle waste streams. The innovative technology uses a process that repurposes waste into new materials or recovers materials from waste without affecting their quality. With valorization, the upcycled material tends to be more valuable than the original virgin material.

Companies can use this process to convert organic waste into chemicals and even energy. Biogas produced from treating organic waste using anaerobic digesters is a classic example. With this novel technology, recycling facilities divert more waste from waterways and landfills while increasing revenue.

 Example Companies

1. Avris Environment Technologies, India: This company converts food waste into biogas using anaerobic digestion. The company’s innovative food waste treatment system is called Chuggs. It treats food waste at the source so users don’t have to deal with the hassles of disposal. Its modular design allows for minimal human intervention, allowing fast food joints, restaurants, and hotels to use a biogas plant on their premises without needing to use liquefied petroleum gas. This translates to lower energy costs.
2. SBS Thermal Technologies, Spain: Relying on its patented waste heat valorization technique, this company creates the right conditions for energy and mass transfer using high-efficient contact technology. Recycling facilities leverage this technology to improve the efficiency of chemical recycling.

Inspired? Pin it!