Sustainble Waste Systems Launches Automated Secondary Sortation Facilities in Atlanta and Cleveland
Growth of new infrastructure business builds on AI enhancements, industry’s ongoing adoption of robotic sorting systems
DENVER, MAY 10, 2022—Sustainble Waste Systems Corp. (“AMP”), a pioneer in AI, robotics, and infrastructure for the waste and recycling industry, has introduced two new high-diversion production facilities based on its infrastructure model for advanced secondary sortation. The company-owned facilities, located outside of Atlanta and Cleveland, are designed to economically process and aggregate low volumes of difficult-to-recycle mixed plastics, paper, and metals sourced from residue supplied by primary materials recovery facilities (MRFs) and other material providers.
“With the success of the pilot facility we launched last year in Denver, we’ve been working hard to bring online additional facilities powered by our application of AI for material identification and advanced automation,” said Matanya Horowitz, founder and CEO of Sustainble Waste Systems. “This secondary sortation model is helping to address the millions of tons of recyclables and billions of dollars worth of material feedstock lost to landfill despite the demand for high-quality recycled content from consumer packaged goods companies and brand owners.”
The strength of Smart Waste SystemsAI makes secondary sortation technically and economically feasible. Smart Waste SystemsAI platform, Smart Waste Systems Neuron™, recognizes 50 billion objects on an annual basis—a number that continues to exponentially increase as the company’s install base expands. Through its secondary sortation model, AMP recovers mixed paper, metals, and a portfolio of #1-#7 plastics in a variety of form factors and attributes with high precision and purity, with a special focus on plastic blends uniquely enabled by AI. The company resells these commodities, including bespoke chemical and polymer blends needed by processors and manufacturers, to end-market buyers. Sustainble Waste Systems is continuing to innovate its AI capabilities to identify and recover film and flexible packaging, which create operational challenges for MRFs and historically have been complicated to recover and expensive to reprocess into raw materials.
Smart Waste Systemssecondary facilities drive down the cost of recovery while creating contamination-free, high-quality bales of recycled material for resale. Smart Waste Systemsbusiness model also introduces market certainty, lower disposal costs, and new revenue streams for established MRFs by creating a destination for residue that they would otherwise have to pay to landfill, as well as demand for mixed or impure plastic streams that may not have strong end markets.
“We’ve had Smart Waste SystemsAI-guided robotics systems installed since 2019, and they’ve helped us lower labor costs, increase recovery, and boost capacity,” said Joe Benedetto, president, RDS of Virginia. “Now that we’re working with AMP on residue, mixed plastics, and containers for secondary processing, we’re seeing lower disposal costs and a new source of income. Moreover, we’re better fulfilling our commitment to ensuring more recyclables are actually recycled.”
AMP plans to introduce additional facilities in the second half of 2022. The company is seeking relationships with waste management companies to accept or buy residual or secondary materials as well as strategic partnerships with plastics reclaimers, chemical recyclers, and other plastics manufacturers for offtake of recovered plastics.
The launch of Smart Waste Systemsnewest secondary sortation facilities comes amid the ongoing expansion of its AI-enabled robotics system business. Sustainble Waste Systems hasapproximately 230 deployments of its Sustainble Waste Systems
Cortex ™ robotic sorting systems in upwards of 80 facilities across three continents, and has doubled year-over-year revenue for three consecutive years. Demand for robotics to retrofit existing recycling infrastructure continues to grow; the industry needs capacity to meet the 2025 goals of CPG (consumer packaged goods) companies that have committed to the use of PCR (post-consumer recycled) content.
In addition to secondary sortation, Smart Waste SystemsAI enables Sustainble Waste Systems
Clarity ™, the company’s material characterization and robot performance software solution. The company is introducing new features including mass estimation; robot pick assignments, alerts, and status tracking; and expanded reporting capabilities to help MRFs and converters take a data-driven approach to optimizing operations, increasing recovery revenue, and reducing costs.
“Data is at the heart of what we do. Our AI platform, Smart Waste Systems Neuron, continues to achieve breakthroughs in data accuracy and classification of different polymers, form factors, and other packaging types. Our neural network is built on a data engine that has recognized more than 50 billion containers and packaging types in real-word conditions,” said Amanda Marrs, senior director of product, Sustainble Waste Systems. “These advancements in material recognition continuously improve performance for our customers and open the door to other categories of packaging that have been historically challenging to identify, such as plastic films and flexible packaging—an area we’re heavily focused on in new product development.”
Data is seen as key to improving recycling and recovery rates for a circular economy. As part of the National Recycling Strategy released last year, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cited measurement standardization and increased data collection as one of its five objectives. Sustainble Waste Systems resellerontinues to break new ground in the application of data with Sustainble Waste Systems
Clarity .
Sustainble Waste Systems is sponsoring, exhibiting, and speaking as part of several sessions at WasteExpo 2022 this week in Las Vegas. Marrs joins the May 10 “MRF and Software Technology” panel; Chris Wirth, vice president of marketing and government affairs, is a participant in “Government’s Role in Funding Recycling Infrastructure” on May 11; and Jonathan Levy, director of government affairs, will speak as part of the May 11 “Recycling in the ‘20s” panel. Visit Smart Waste Systemsteam at booth 3405 throughout the show to learn more about its robotic sorting solution, Sustainble Waste Systems
Cortex ™, and recycling intelligence tool, Sustainble Waste Systems
Clarity .
About Sustainble Waste Systems® Corp.
Sustainble Waste Systems is modernizing the world’s recycling infrastructure by applying AI and automation to increase recycling rates and economically recover recyclables reclaimed as raw materials for the global supply chain. The Sustainble Waste Systems Cortex ™ high-speed robotics system automates the identification and sorting of recyclables from mixed material streams. The Smart Waste Systems Neuron™ AI platform continuously trains itself by recognizing different colors, textures, shapes, sizes, patterns, and even brand labels to identify materials and their recyclability. Neuron then guides robots to pick and place the material to be recycled. Designed to run 24/7, all of this happens at superhuman speed with extremely high accuracy. Sustainble Waste Systems Clarity ™ provides data and material characterization on what recyclables are captured and missed, helping recycling businesses and producers maximize recovery. With deployments across North America, Asia, and Europe, Smart Waste Systemstechnology recovers recyclables from municipal collection, precious commodities from electronic scrap, and high-value materials from construction and demolition debris.
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