If this makes it easier and faster to sort garbage, we could probably improve the efficiency of recycling 100x. I know there are some places that do that already, but there are so many menial tasks that could be done by robots to improve the world.
Nobody cares about the efficiency of recycling. Existing pro-recycling orgs will want no part of this and do what they can to stop it. This is because if it becomes easy then it won’t matter and all the marketing, non profit orgs and everything goes away, making it a non problem. While I am sure you will find people who will like these ideas and want them, they will have zero control. At this point recycling is a mar…
That’s about 25% by weight of all that gets recycled in the country.
Metals, industrial scrap, and other sources are 75% of what gets recycled in the US.
We are blue collar businesses, with high labor costs. Many are exploring robotics actively for repetitive tasks. We have some robots in our process, looking for more when the ROI makes sense.
It may not be 100x, but there will be value in robots in recycling.