Recycling gets an AI upgrade in Portland
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Waste Management's new North Portland recycling facility features an AI-assisted maze of conveyor belts and high-tech machines to make sure that your recycling ends up where it belongs and that greasy to-go boxes and other nonrecyclables are culled from the herd.
Why it matters: The $47 million facility opened this month and is the company's latest move to combat the narrative that recycling is broken.
- "We're giving everything that comes through here a second chance at having a second life," Logan Nelson, with Waste Management's recycling operations team, told Axios.
Zoom in: Quality control starts the minute drivers dump their loads, with staff pulling out garden hoses, string lights and anything else that could jam the processing machines.
- From there, paper, cardboard, bottles and cans speed through 94 conveyor belts, where screens and magnets separate the useful from the waste.
- Then comes the tech: Materials pass under AI-powered optical scanners that detect anything that doesn't belong — like plastic bottles and jugs — and then blast those items from the stream with air jets.
- "They're the Ferraris of recycling," Nelson said.
Catch up quick: Such efforts to separate the recyclable wheat from the unrecyclable chaff have been a long time coming.
- For years, the recycling industry has been plagued by "wish-cycling" — well-intentioned people tossing questionable materials in the bin thinking they're helping the environment.
- But contaminated materials are harder to recycle — and more of them end up in landfills.
- That's part of what prompted Oregon lawmakers to pass the Recycling Modernization Act — which, among other outcomes, led to Waste Management's new investment.
Between the lines: What you can and cannot recycle isn't always intuitive.
- In Multnomah County, paper envelopes are good to go, but shredded paper is a no-no.
- Glass bottles are recyclable, but drinking glasses go in the trash.
- Most plastic bottles with a neck are fine, but plastic takeout containers? Not so much.
The bottom line: Once the materials are sorted, they're baled up and sent out to start their second lives.
- "People don't think it's real," Jackie Lang, a spokesperson for Waste Management, told Axios. "They think the materials are being landfilled. This should validate for Oregonians that recycling is real — it works when we all work together."
