AI helps recycle old milk bottles into new plastic packaging

AI helps turn old milk bottles into new ones

BBC

Artificial intelligence is being used to help turn old milk bottles into new ones and they can be back in your fridge “within two weeks”.

Recycling site Biffa Polymers in Redcar uses the technology to analyse materials moving along conveyor belts at a speed and scale that “would be difficult for people to match”.

Managing director James McLeary, said AI could identify different types of plastic using optical and infra-red scanning, as well as image analysis.

But he said the plant still relied on a workforce of about 200 people who are freed up by AI to ensure products are of the right quality, rather than “spending their time doing tedious tasks”.

The technology can analyse images of waste and identify a material’s composition.

McLeary said that was “particularly useful” when bottles have been crushed or distorted and they were trying to select high-density polyethylene (HDPE) bottles, which can be recycled for food-grade packaging.

“A milk bottle might be easy to recognise when it is intact, but once crushed its shape can change completely.

“AI systems can be trained to recognise that the different shapes are still milk bottles,” he said.

The Redcar plant – which has now processed the equivalent of more than 10 billion plastic milk bottles in almost 20 years – takes plastic which has already been sorted by type and colour and carries out the final stages of processing.

Material is shredded, washed and separated before being treated and turned into fine plastic pellets.

Those pellets can then be used to produce new packaging, including food-grade material for milk bottles.

The company said it was investigating in other robotic systems which could use AI to physically pick out those bottles.

It also uses AI for safety around the site, monitoring cameras and identifying “potential risks… for example, when someone appears to be moving into an area where a vehicle could be operating”.

But McLeary said the plant remained reliant on its workforce despite the growing role of technology and that they still need people who are “prepared to do good, hard labour on the lines, sorting stuff very responsibly”.

He added that the technology was allowing the recycling process to speed up.

“[A] bottle that you threw away two weeks ago may be back in somebody else’s fridge, because that’s how quickly the material gets recycled in the UK,” McLeary said.

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Recycling
Waste management
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