People in America recycle 6.3 billion pounds of plastics every year. Although that is a huge number, there still is more work to minimize plastic waste. The good thing is, eventually, a gradual drumbeat of new technological innovations has helped reduce the cost of the recycling process and improve efficiency…so even more plastics can dwell in new products.
Listed here are 11 groundbreaking technologies that could possibly improve plastic recycling in the future which will help us continue our recycling traction.
In accordance with the latest report published by the PwC and World Economic Forum, Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for the Earth, the readiness of important technological innovation including machine learning and big data is setting up new opportunities for earth’s resource efficiency.
The Ocean Cleanup is actually a non-profit firm which is generating state-of-the-art solutions and technologies to clear the world’s marine environments from plastic trash.
They’re using machine and satellite imaging to find the five trillion pieces of plastic waste, and they also observe the world’s “ocean trash patches. They approximate that within five years they could easily collect 50% of the marine’s trash.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has also reported that it’ll use geostationary satellites to identify this huge volume of plastic waste from space to locate exactly where it is most targeted and to concentrate on cleanup initiatives on these areas.
A Polypropylene (PP) and Polyethylene (PE) are the cause of two-thirds of the plastic materials we use, and recyclers usually sort them for recycling where possible. But experts claim that incorporating a specific polymer to used PP and PE can make a hard-new plastic which is much easier to recycle.
The experts also claim this new plastic material is tough enough to make product packaging using even fewer materials than today’s product packaging, which could possibly be great news for our natural environment.
A remarkable recycling phenomenon in the technology industry is innovative developments such as the Apple robot that processes e-waste more proficiently and properly than humans. This robot extracts the most useful materials and components from the waste items, may it be a computer, television, or phone.
Can recycling meet artificial intelligence?
“Clarke,” a recycling bot designed with artificial intelligence can separate and identify things at super-human speeds. Algorithms empower Clarke to find packaging points such as images and logos – then identify them for collecting and sorting. This will help keep recyclable plastic wastes out of our landfills.
Most of these modern advances can help reduce energy cost. Reduced energy and water use could possibly lead to extra ecological benefits and reduce recycling costs.
Recyclers usually identify several different sorts of plastics.
Hand collection could be sluggish and costly, so increasingly more recyclers are embracing high-tech options: infrared (IR) laser and IR beams identify the different plastics and find their different compositions, then air spurts the different plastics into separate channels for recycling.
Do you know about those wraps and labels on several plastic beverage bottles or containers?
Most of these product labels can help you know what is in the bottle, but sometimes they could gum up a recycling machine. If the containers’ or bottles’ labels are mixed with plastic, the quality of the recycled plastic materials could suffer. However, a sophisticated system can certainly remove most of the product labels without ruining the bottles – this may reduce waste materials and help more plastic containers get reused.
A whole new modern technology will clear away odor, color, and various other impurities from post-use polypropylene, this type of plastic is widely used for bottle caps and yogurt cups.
Experts claim that the result is a plastic resin that is like new. A big new facility based on this modern technology is being built in Ironton, Ohio.
Most of these and various other promising innovative developments can help make plastic materials recycling more effective, conserve natural resources, which help more used plastic materials become new, useful merchandise. But don’t forget that technologies alone won’t make a difference that we can still recycle more plastics – it is actually up to all of us to make sure our plastic items are making their way into the trash can.
Plastic recycling usually makes use of water to completely clean and cool plastic materials. To do recycling even better for our ecosystem, several recyclers have formulated technologies that can easily cool, clean, and create reused plastic materials without water.
Big data will certainly be key to tracking and measuring the earth’s resources. Using data visualization and machine learning, big data can easily generate better choices.
With Machine-to-Machine technology and the IoT (Internet of Things), our waste and recycling management is becoming smarter and more efficient. Wireless tracking can easily be installed in different products, for example, balers or SmartPack Trash Compactors to send employees an alert of required upkeep or emptying their mobile device or computer. It makes sense to save resources and time, and get a better outcome of waste and recycling management goals for facilities and businesses.
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