Highlighting the plastics industry’s well-known track record in recycling, London-based Recycleye says it has raised $17 million in new funding led by a “deep tech” investor DCVC.
the beginning complain Their recycling-picking robot can identify materials “at 60 frames per second” and categorize them more accurately than humans. Finally, the warm-up speak Its technology cuts down on “material sorting costs”. TechCrunch has reached out to the company for information on the expected cost savings.
Based in Palo Alto, DCVC says its mission is to “multiply the benefits of capitalism for everyone while reducing its costs”. Climate technology is one of its focuses and a prism through which we can see the harmful effects of capitalism on the environment. In the case of plastics, the oil industry has long since preached the virtues recycle plastic, while doubt its economic viabilityto sell more virgin plastic.
Every stage of plastic production breaks climate and the natural world, from “the extraction and transportation of fossil fuels that are the main raw material for the production of plastics, to refining and manufacturing, to waste management, to the entry of plastics into the environment.” ,” report Center for International Environmental Law wrote in 2019.
Plastic pollution – a major cause of climate change – is also on the rise. That is partly due to shortcomings in “waste management and recycling,” OECD, an intergovernmental agency, said last year. The group concludes that someone needs to “create a distinct and well-functioning market for recycled plastics.”
The point is: Sort, melt, and ultimately reuse most of the plastic — which you can only recycle a few times — much more expensive than buying virgin plastic. much of the time, we simply don’t do that. Most plastic (about 91%according to OECD) cannot be recycled and Single-use plastic production is at an all-time high.
By focusing on speeding up scanning, identifying and categorizing used documents, Recycleye is one between much companies that is try repair part of this broken system with AI. Citing the OECD report, Recycleye said, “This changing dynamic of waste and environmental harm, seen across a wide range of materials, presents a tremendous business opportunity.”
Recycleye says its scanning and machine learning technology is “twice as fast as the industry standard and means each item is seen an average of 30 times as it travels along the carousel, with a pre-determined chance of getting it right. when taking goods twice as high”. We’ve reached out to the company for more context on these metrics.
Several other investors have participated in Recycleye’s new Series A funding round, including a London-based early-stage investor Playfair capital city.
