Sorting Out the Trash with Sortie McSortface and Sir Sorts a Lot

In this episode of Crbnly Conversations, we dive into how AI-powered robots, with quirky names like Sortie McSortface and Sir Sorts a Lot, could revolutionize recycling by smart sorting and reducing contamination. They tackle challenges like the hefty price tag and emphasize the ongoing need to boost recycling practices.

Useful Resources
The Future of Recycling Is Sorty McSortface
US waste and recycling industry worth $91B in 2022, landfill capacity consolidation continues
Three Years of Meaningful, Measurable Impact: How The Polypropylene Coalition Is Driving Progress in Recycling for #5 Plastic
AMP Robotics
AMP Robotics IG

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Transcript

Shane (00:02.686)
All right, hello everyone. Shane and Chad here. We wanna welcome you to topic B of our Recycling Retro on Carbony Conversations. Today we're gonna unpack the second approach to improve American recycling rates and actually get the right item in the right way stream. But before we sort it all out, let's remind everyone that we are a podcast where friends examine the intersection of community.

lifestyles and consumption in our lives. We've created this in a hope to share our stories in curiosity to motivate actions that lessen our carbon footprint. We also wanna use our platform to create a space for listeners and community members to share their carbonly journeys as well. And please never forget, whether you're a first time listener, a carbonly deep diver, or just a loyal fan, we've...

We've made it very easy for you to listen to us on your favorite podcast app and also watch our episodes on YouTube. Literally all you need to do is scroll down to our show notes, click on find and join the conversation and there you'll be able to explore all of our conversations and catch any future episodes which we released every Wednesday and listen to our lovely voices on your favorite podcast app.

And if you're on any social media, Instagram, TikTok, X or YouTube, please like, share, subscribe, comment, do whatever you can to try and spread this. Uh, or carbon Lee words. Uh, we definitely support or we, we appreciate any support that's, uh, that's given to us. So, um, check out our social medias as well. Um, but let's get it going. Let's get part B going.

Chadwick (01:32.663)
Thanks for watching.

Shane (01:59.871)
Um, what do we got going on this one, Chad?

Chadwick (02:04.927)
Well, Shane, since we last met, I have not found a product in my cupboards that has a QR code on it, but how likely I can add it to the blue recycling bin in our co-op. Which might just mean we don't regularly buy items in the Smart Label Partnership, which is a high probability. But before we get into it, let's refresh our memories. We kicked off the episode last week on topic A, who should bear the brunt of solving our recycling problems, consumers or producers.

and dove into this smart labeling nonprofit that's working with what, over a thousand brands and over a hundred thousand products that get the QR code that one of us can scan, tells you if the item is recyclable in your zip code, and then that way you can feel confident that it can be recycled. The products in the information, the recycling is dynamic, which means it updates.

Shane (02:43.01)
Yeah.

Chadwick (03:02.375)
with all the new current information. So let's say you live in, I don't know, Minneapolis, Minnesota, and you couldn't recycle number seven plastic containers, but now you can. That would actually, the app would update that with any of those brand partnerships. So we dug into that, but we're gonna pivot and get out of that ring of, is it consumers, is it producers who should be making it easier to recycle? And actually flip over to the tech and robot side in topic B.

So will we be able to use AI and sensors to quote, get smart sorting all of our waste appropriately? So all of us consumers, we just don't have to. So Shane, I'm wondering, have you found any items or will you look for the QR code when choosing groceries or clothing?

Shane (03:51.546)
So I did see, I did have a QR code on something recently and it's really skipping my mind right now. I cannot recall exactly what it was, possibly like a box of cereal. But now that I've kind of read this information, I think that when I am grocery shopping, I think that my brain will be a little bit more trained to look out for the QR codes.

and test it out a little bit.

Chadwick (04:24.471)
It'd be interesting to see if there's some type of marketing brand partnership with the grocery store chains that kind of highlight this. Because if I'm...

Shane (04:32.154)
have like a shelf specific to, you know, those type of items. Something like that. Yeah.

Chadwick (04:37.315)
Or signage, you know, it said like Horizon Organics, right? How many organic, and they do a lot of dairy products, how many organic yogurts and milk and cheeses are out there? A bunch, right? I don't even wanna guess. So if I was in the grocery store and I cared about making sure I could recycle the container my yogurt came in, I mean, Horizon Organics would have that to be able to scream at me, you know, buy me, buy me, here's how easy I am to recycle, scan here.

Shane (04:46.987)
Yep.

Shane (05:01.396)
Yeah.

Chadwick (05:05.495)
They'll be curious to see if that shows up in Whole Foods, Kroger's, Target, Walmart, you name it, beyond. So I will say this, I haven't seen the QR codes, but as we record here, I'm looking at our kitchen shelf and we have a bin of cherry tomatoes from Trader Joe's. And usually those bins are plastic, some type of plastic with a plastic sheath over it. And the one we just bought recently is like that.

Shane (05:11.136)
Yep.

Chadwick (05:37.191)
It's the, what do you call it? The paper mache material that's made from post-consumer recycled paper products. That's what they're in. So now I don't even have to know if that's recyclable or not because I know just, hey, I can throw it in my compost bucket. That's where it actually really belongs. Other than the plastic on top, like that, I don't even have to think about it now, right? It just goes out with my food scraps. So that's a big win. And I know we've talked and we've reached out to Olly, the...

Shane (05:44.351)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (05:53.451)
Yeah.

Shane (05:58.636)
Yep.

Chadwick (06:05.771)
the supplement brand and I'm looking at those plastic bins too. And they have the reduce, reuse, recycle emblem. They have the B certified corporation. They have another like label about how they're like safe to eat and certifiable like clean, but nothing about how or where to recycle. I will say now that we're ranting about this or at least I am a little bit, the last time I got rid of a toothpaste container,

Shane (06:08.726)
Yeah.

Chadwick (06:35.391)
the one that we use, Sensodyne, as the brand. Didn't have a QR code, but it told me the difference in recyclability for the cap and the tube on the back. That was labeled specifically, like with instructions. That was helpful.

Shane (06:44.734)
Mmm.

Shane (06:48.208)
That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that's I haven't seen that yet. I'll have to keep an eye out for that.

Chadwick (06:54.707)
Yeah, that's why I'm recalling it right now. It's like that's not normal in my, at least in my consumption. So carbon-align listeners, be on the lookout. I think this wave of updates and changes are going to be made. Um, as a nerd, I keep thinking about like plastic is like usually injected mold. So it's like you build a template and then it's. Goos the plastic material heats it into a mold and shoots it out. And it's kind of really fast.

Shane (07:04.779)
Yeah.

Shane (07:14.269)
Mm-hmm.

Chadwick (07:23.647)
making sound effects here. But that little number with the recycling emblem is baked into it. So that means they have to update these molds for all these products. I'm sure it's not cheap and I'm sure there's tens if not more thousands of products already in old containers. So even if Horizon Organics made this choice they may be three months out still to get that printed on any of those type of things like that. So lots more to come there but let's flip the script.

Shane (07:32.335)
And I'm sure that's not cheap, you know.

Shane (07:41.192)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (07:45.826)
Right.

Chadwick (07:52.319)
Shane, let's not even talk about it. Who, I don't care. I just wanna throw everything into the garbage can, which as we shared earlier, the EPA keeps reporting on this. We keep sharing and everyone else does the same statistic. Let's flip it though. About 68% of Americans.

waste doesn't get into the recycling stream. You know, that's true. So if it's going to the garbage, the landfill, what's going on with it? That's the big question about the topic today. Can robots make it end up where it's supposed to? Smarter, quicker, faster than all of us. So you've read this article, we've talked about this in the past, like where are we headed Shane? Robot's the answer.

Shane (08:12.476)
Yep.

Shane (08:30.323)
Yeah.

Shane (08:38.062)
There I think so. First of all, I love the names of the robots. The Sortie McSortface and Sir Sorts a lot. It's just genius. Yeah, if we can keep them named that as they grow in popularity or just continue to create these funny names would be. Yeah. Yeah, so.

Chadwick (08:47.531)
I mean, that sounds pretty appropriately. Yeah.

Chadwick (08:58.387)
Get them a Twitter handle or an X handle and start showcasing. Yeah, they're reals.

Shane (09:06.662)
So, I mean, I definitely just reading through these articles, I definitely think recycling as well as plenty of other avenues, robots and AI are the future of it. One thing that did stick out to me that I know will be kind of like one of the first arguments of a lot of people is like, I think they said the average cost of one right now is three hundred thousand dollars.

which is pricey, you know, and they say like it can do the work of about two humans so far, but it doesn't get tired. So it's not like it can just work an eight hour shift and then be done. But I already hear the arguments of people and rightfully so of saying, well, if it's two humans, that's the robot costs 300,000. Like, why don't you just pay?

Chadwick (09:48.267)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (10:06.802)
humans more money and they'll do a better job. But it's like naturally we're human like we get tired. Our our efficiency slows down as we get tired. So like I hope that the price doesn't become like a. A big topic to where people are like battling against it and I'm pretty sure as more tech companies create it, they'll be able to get the price a little bit lower.

Chadwick (10:36.551)
Yeah, I think those are all great like candid reactions to this. Um, I think there's also, I mean, again, wait, this is not this episode about, but like the upskilling of like tech skills and manufacturing skills. Like if they're not, if we're not paying humans to sort trash, can we help them get educated to manage the rope? Mr. McSorty Sortface and Mrs. McSorty Sortface sort for us, right?

Shane (11:02.665)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chadwick (11:05.919)
How many human texts do we need for that? Or to help design them, build them, ship them. And then even on that, like the side that I keep, what's the right word here? I wanna say ruminate, but that's kind of digesting them through multiple systems. I'm just pondering because the economics nerd in me like has really gravitated this item. So in the article talks about, I wanna make sure I say this right.

Materials recovery facilities. So that's in essence, like when we send waste and garbage to a, if it doesn't go directly to the dump, it goes to one of these plants to get sorted. Because the theory is if you sort it out, you can pull the things that are valuable from the waste stream against the things that are. And if we can do this with more urgency, quicker, more effectively using AI, because in essence, it's the same thing as machine learning.

these robots just use cameras that are really smart, really quick and fast and learn what things are what and they can sort it right or grab it or move it out versus what we have been doing more analog with like lights and magnets and belts and shaking and using kind of like physics to our advantage versus like robot AI technology. So where I'm going with this is if we know that number five plastic K cups

Shane (12:11.348)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (12:22.929)
Yeah

Chadwick (12:30.867)
have a reuse purpose into a secondary market that has value above zero. And these robots serve sorts a lot, can pull out all the K-cups in the waste stream. We have now extracted value from a messed up jumble mess of is it valuable or not stream into something that can be. Because otherwise that stuff would go to the incinerator, to the dump, to a boat.

and dumped in the ocean for landfill, like who knows? It's gonna end up somewhere without the next best use. And I think that's where the value add is. And I don't think we're anywhere near that because of cost and expense and how many people have these all set up. But I think if we can get there, then like, I mean, we've talked about this in regenerative business and we brought that up in the last episode too, is the ability to do that regenerates, you know, a circular economy, right? So.

Shane (13:12.714)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (13:27.915)
Right.

Chadwick (13:28.635)
and will the ability to sort things smartly, quicker, etc. create more value streams from the garbage or from the products that we're consuming? And I think if we can kind of lean in that way, I'm pro-robot on this side. I think this is a good use of artificial intelligence and technology, but I don't think it's gonna solve it right now. And it does beget the question of like, what are all the things that don't have like a...

a next level regenerative value chain, that stuff still has to go somewhere. Will that mean like, will we reduce? I'm just, I'm gonna pontificate one more thing, is like, does that mean we start to identify all the things we shouldn't be using in our products so we can change that versus trying to change everything in an industry around plastics? Like, it seems like a more smarter way to approach the problem, but it does create more complexities if this works as intended.

Shane (14:28.022)
Definitely so. And then another thing that kind of stuck out to me that I think a lot of people when recycling may not think too much of it, but it also will help with...

it'll improve with waste stream contaminants. So basically the AI driven robot would be able to identify if there's too much peanut butter left in a jar, and kind of pick that out because that's another big factor when it comes to like recycling food packaging or just food products is like, if you,

depending on what type of product it is, if there's too much of, let's say a tomato can of, a jar of tomato sauce or things like that, if there's too much of that left in there, even though yes, the glass jar is recyclable, if it's not clean enough, it can still contaminate the whole bin of recyclables.

You know, so I think, I think that's another cool aspect when it comes to that is it takes, takes out some of the human error when it's like, it can identify, oh, okay. This has too much food left in it. Let's pick this out. And unfortunately that would probably still go into the landfill because I'm sure they're not going to like train the robot, how to like spray it with, you know, clean it out or whatnot.

Chadwick (15:42.014)
Yeah.

Chadwick (16:07.111)
Yeah, or it could go into a different set of waste use cases. I think you've just given me idea on how to tie both episodes together. Topic A topic B. So QR codes really what they do is they cut the information cost from is this recyclable a B can I recycle it in the community I live in right? That's what QR codes on our products are going to do for.

Shane (16:11.808)
Yeah.

Shane (16:24.925)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (16:32.034)
Yeah.

Chadwick (16:35.259)
It doesn't mean everything is recycled. It doesn't mean everything will make it in there, but it makes it simpler for us as consumers, as humans. And the majority of us that do have smartphones can scan it and quickly find out, right?

B, if we're scanning all of our waste stream items, that also makes it simpler for producers to know what people are and aren't doing. Like, are the, what's going in the garbage, could have we've like used in a different way? Are we actually using too much, maybe we should sell peanut butter only in small containers, because there's always a third of peanut butter left in 80% of the jars. Like, again, I'm going extreme on an example there.

Shane (17:12.031)
Smaller, yep.

Shane (17:18.891)
Yeah.

Chadwick (17:19.007)
But we, I mean, this world, this economy is being driven on an information-based, technology-based, and we're using now making robots help us sort all that information out. I guess pun intended, we can sort out our garbage waste streams and become either better reducers, better re-users, and better recyclers because of it, and then regeneratively add value chains through this waste. So I think.

Shane (17:38.414)
Mm-hmm.

Chadwick (17:45.995)
Both are compressing that gap of information for companies and people like us that need to do something with their waste, hopefully to create a better carbon-free lifestyle for all of us. That's why I don't think one or the other is the right answer, in my opinion. It depends from my perspective. But both have to be invested in. As consumers, I think we need to go out there and shout.

Shane (17:56.079)
Mm-hmm.

Shane (18:04.736)
Right.

Chadwick (18:16.435)
We want QR codes. We want Sorty McSortface. We want them both so it's easier for us to feel better about the decisions we're making.

Shane (18:19.874)
Yep.

Shane (18:25.066)
Yeah. And even maybe even the QR codes for food products can have something in there, like a reminder of, you know, wiping out the, the rest of the tomato paste out of the can, you know, um.

Chadwick (18:38.827)
Totally. I mean, yeah, it could feed back in like you guys don't wipe enough peanut butter out Make sure you clean this jar. We can't recycle it flags when you scan. Oh, yeah, brilliant shade

Shane (18:45.11)
Yep.

Yep.

Yep. So no, that's awesome. I think a fun challenge to the listeners out there, like hit us up on any of the social medias. What's a cool name that you would come up with for a robot when it comes to recycling? That'd be a fun challenge.

Chadwick (19:12.079)
Yeah, I'm not thinking. I don't got anything on top of my head like... I'll sort it out!

Shane (19:14.578)
Me neither.

Shane (19:18.374)
Yeah, yeah.

Chadwick (19:20.759)
I don't know. Well, topic B complete. Feeling good here, Shane. We're getting into that holiday swing of things. Pretty soon Thanksgiving will be upon us. And I think a little bit more in November yet to come. So until our next episode, I hope everyone has a great Carbon Line week.

Shane (19:26.322)
Yep.