rStream, a robotics startup founded by two University of Massachusetts Amherst grads, is taking on one of recycling's biggest challenges: sorting. Recycling rules can be confusing. That's where rStream's AI-powered robot comes in. The robot scans trash and recyclables to identify valuable materials before they're lost to landfills.
Recycling contamination — when dirty containers, soft plastics, and nonrecyclable materials end up in recycling bins — costs facilities hundreds of millions of dollars a year and sends tons of recyclables to the dump. As the Greenville Recorder reported, rStream offers a solution. Instead of relying on people to know all the sorting rules, the robot uses artificial intelligence to sort waste automatically.
Mounted inside a mobile trailer, the system photographs each item and uses an advanced dataset to decide whether it's trash, recyclable, or a specialty item. By improving sorting at the source, rStream hopes to boost recycling rates, create cleaner materials for waste companies to sell, and reduce how much trash ends up in landfills.
The idea was born at the UMass College of Engineering. Founders Ian Goodine and Ethan Walko first tackled recycling challenges while working in a polymer science lab, where they realized a big problem was a broken system of waste collection and sorting. "It's a monster of a challenge that, once we heard it a bunch of times, we couldn't not try to do something about it," Walko told the Recorder.
Since graduating in 2022, they've raised $3 million in funding and developed extensive datasets that can recognize thousands of types of waste, from standard recyclables to tricky items such as peanut butter jars and ketchup bottles.
Testing the system at UMass Amherst dining commons and waste facilities helped the AI learn to navigate real-world trash conditions. What makes rStream's technology special is the customizable AI behind it. Different buildings, cities, and waste companies have different recycling rules, and rStream's robot can learn and adjust as needed.
So, instead of asking people to know complicated recycling rules, rStream believes in a future with waste stations that can sort recyclables. With technology such as this improving and companies including Trashie and Hydro Flask incentivizing recycling, the process could become easier, lucrative, and more effective across the board.
Though AI is being used for good in this case, it's important to note that the technology generally has negative climate impacts because of the massive amounts of electricity and water it uses — something that needs to be addressed to make it more sustainable.
While the rStream robot is still in the pilot phase, the founders hope to expand it to "everywhere there's garbage," according to Goodine. In the meantime, you can make an even bigger dent by choosing plastic-free options for everyday products, which helps reduce what needs to be recycled and prevents plastic from ending up in our oceans.
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