Humans generate a remarkable amount of garbage: over 2 billion tonnes per year, according to the World Bank, or approximately 4.5 trillion pounds annually. And that figure is going to grow. Global garbage is expected to reach 3.4 billion tonnes by 2050.
Even if you could figure out where to put that much garbage, it’s going to leak dangerous greenhouse gasses that contribute to climate change. Solid waste landfills are the third-largest source of methane emissions in the United States, according to the most recent data available from the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2019, landfills released 15% of methane emissions, which is equivalent to emissions from more than 21.6 million passenger cars driven for one year.
Recycling is no panacea. And furthermore, there’s a wide gap between what’s possible to be recycled and what actually is recycled. Dry recyclables such as plastic, paper and cardboard, metal and glass are equal to 38% of municipal waste, according to data in the World Bank’s What a Waste 2.0 report. Meanwhile, only 13.5% of those dry recyclables are actually recycled globally.
Technology companies are trying to tackle the garbage problem from multiple directions, improving recycling processes and creating new materials to make single-use products that are compostable.
The U.S. waste industry can use the help. Richer countries do a better job of recycling than poorer countries, but the United States isn’t near the top of the list, recycling 34.6% of its garbage. While poor countries on average only recycle 3.7% and many don’t recycle at all or don’t have data, some of the best rates are in Europe and especially among some of the smallest territories, such as The Faroe Islands, a self-governing archipelago which is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which is No. 1 in the world, recycling 67% of its garbage.
Recycling cost, profits, and automation
“The basic principles of recycling are the collection, sorting, manual and or mechanical processing, and then delivery of the required quality of recycled materials to manufacturing industries,” Ross Bartley, the trade and environment director at the Brussels, Belgium-headquartered Bureau of International Recycling, told CNBC. “Even in industrialized countries, manual sorting may be necessary and that can be complemented, and maybe replaced, by automated sorting systems using suitable technologies.”
Automated sorting happens with magnets, flotation, wind sifters (to separate light and heavy materials), and cameras, among other techniques, according to Bartley, and such equipment can be bought off the shelf and integrated into recycling plants.
But key questions include how much the separation equipment costs, the all-in running costs per tonne of processed materials, and what is the added value to each of the separated streams of materials. In other words: “When is it profitable?” Bartley said.
Matanya Horowitz, the founder and CEO of AMP Robotics, which ranked No. 25 on this year’s CNBC Disruptor 50 list, got his big recycling idea after visiting a materials recovery facility (MRF) — the destination for residential and commercial recyclables — and learned not only how demanding work conditions are, but how inefficient the process can be.
