The world has a problem with rubbish. The number of things we throw is expected 3.8 billion metric tonsBy 2050, the reduction of what we use would take a long solution to solve the problem, but let’s face the truth, we are not superb in buying less.
This leaves recycling that has its own problems. People routinely attempt to recycled dirty yogurt cups or throw plastic in an aluminum container. All this makes recycling costlier, because ultimately someone has to manually select unwanted things.
In response, several firms built automatic recycling sorting systems, including GlacierA 6-year-old company that has developed inexpensive robotic arms controlled by a computer vision to discover over 30 differing types of materials.
The startup has placed his robots in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Phoenix, and now Seattle.
When Glacier tries to expand the robot fleet to more municipalities, he recently collected a series A in the amount of $ 16 million, she said only TechCrunch.
The round was run by the Ecosystem Integrity Fund with participation of Alleycorp, alumni Ventures, Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Cox Extenial, Elysium, New Enterprise Associates, one small planet, resource, overture, VSC ventures and working capital fund.
Materials for recovering materials-Lub MRF, as sorting objects are called at each ends, said Techcrunch, co-founder and general director of Glacier. (*16*) want more waste to be recycled, but MRFs have difficulty finding enough people to handle the sorting line.
Turning throughout the industry is extremely high. Typical MRF will have to employ five times a 12 months for one sorting position. The task is so undesirable that one MRF operator told Hu-Trams that although his wages were higher, he was fearful about the loss of employees with a recent magazine that may open nearby.
“Would you prefer to stand at a portable belt and sort the garbage of people, or do you prefer to lift the boxes in an air -conditioned magazine?” Said Hu-Thrams. “This kind emphasizes the dilemma that many of our clients are facing.”
Glacier offers its works to clients as direct shopping or in the lease model. It encourages MRF to make repairs with which they feel comfortable, providing them with training and spare parts. For those that would like, the startup offers maintenance packages.
Glacier also offers a data product in which MRF and other stakeholders, equivalent to consumer firms, firms and government agencies, pays for access to the waste stream. In the case of MRF, this may occasionally mean identification, where it loses invaluable aluminum cans on the landfill. For a company or regulator, this will mean the control of the waste stream to find out whether the packaging that has been designed for recycling is actually recycling.
With a sufficient number of robots, recycling indicators should improve, if only because the robots are faster and higher to differentiate between recycling and rubbish.
“Every time we send people to control our AI systems, people do much worse,” said Areb Malik, Cto Glacier and the second co -founder. “AI becomes really powerful, he is able to distinguish what people can even see.”