Fort Wayne's Solid Waste Department issued a request for proposals for a new 10-year recyclables processing contract that would take effect Jan. 1, 2025. The department stipulated in the request that recycling companies that receive the contract must achieve a recovery rate above 90 percent.
“To accomplish this, the (materials recovery facilities) that submitted proposals will be using optical sorting, or AI,” Matt Glatz, solid waste management director for the city of Fort Wayne, told The Journal-Gazette on Wednesday. “Three of the four proposals (received) used optical sorting AI technology.”
Artificial intelligence is emerging as a powerful tool to keep recyclable materials out of landfills, with Purdue Fort Wayne associate professor Bin Chen using more than $560,000 in federal funding to study the use of AI to help separate recyclable waste.
Recyclable materials continue to end up in the country's landfills, and with waste generation predicted to increase by 73% by 2050, the problem is likely to get worse. More efficient and innovative solutions to manage waste are needed.
Chen has received a $100,000 grant from the Department of Energy to help Texas-based UHV Technologies develop a machine that sorts recyclable plastic bottles and converts them into chemicals and other usable materials. The sorting process uses an AI-enabled camera system to recognize and separate crushed bottles, which could improve accuracy and reduce production costs.
The $461,071 grant from the Department of Energy to PFW will help UHV Technologies and Penn State work on sorting batteries for recycling. The battery project is expected to begin next month, Chen told The Journal-Gazette on Monday. Chen's responsibilities will include designing and developing a sorting AI engine similar to the machine used for plastic bottles.
“Traditionally, many of these processes have relied on human judgment and expertise,” he says. “Recent advances in AI, such as computer vision, can improve productivity and automate many labor-intensive tasks.”
Sorting of recyclables by materials recovery facilities is primarily done manually, with workers racing against the clock to scan and sort recyclables on fast-moving conveyor belts. This process is not particularly effective, and missorted materials constantly contaminate the recyclables.
To make it easier to sort recyclables, Everest Labs has built a proprietary dataset of more than 5 billion photos of recyclables, allowing it to sort them with over 95% accuracy. The dataset helped California-based Alameda County Industries reduce labor costs by 59% over three years, Everest Labs CEO JD Ambati told Forbes.
In 2014, Governor Mike Pence signed House Bill 1183, which set a goal for the state to recycle at least 50 percent of its municipal solid waste. Ten years later, only 19.5 percent of that waste is being recycled.
According to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management's latest annual Recycling Index report, Indiana generated 9.2 million tons of municipal solid waste in 2022. About 7 million tons ended up in landfills, 1.8 million tons were diverted for recycling and 881.8 pounds were diverted to waste-to-energy.
According to Forbes magazine, the United States is the world's number one waste generator per capita, with an average of 1,800 pounds of waste per resident per year. Despite efforts to manage waste, only 24 percent is currently recycled. This inefficiency not only strains landfill capacity, but also exacerbates environmental and health problems.
Additionally, expanding landfills destroy natural habitats and use more than 1.8 million acres of land in the U.S. as waste dumps. Landfill emissions pose serious health risks to nearby communities and reduce property values.
Technology alone is not enough to solve our waste management problems. Northeast Indiana residents must do their part by disposing of waste responsibly and following the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle.
Simple actions like separating recyclables from general waste can make a big difference to the environment. By combining AI-driven solutions with responsible behavior, Indiana residents can reduce the amount of waste sent to landfills and lead the state toward a more sustainable future.
