From train safety to steel to robotics, Pittsburgh is often at the forefront of technological advancement. When it comes to recycling, two regional companies are making a case that we could be ahead of the curve. Impacting plasticsThe effects of making and using plastic is top of mind for many peopl e led by concern about how plastic products affect our health and the environment. In many communities in the region and elsewhere, this has led to community recycling efforts in which each citizen is asked to separate plastics from garbage. The plastic is brought to large facilities to recycle the plastic (as well as other recyclable materials); yet according to the Environmental Protection Agency, only 5% of plastic actually gets recycled in the USA.That’s not good enough for Georgia Crowther, a mechanical and robotics engineer who founded Reclamation Factory to build automated, hyperlocal recycling systems. The systems she envisions bring recycling to smaller facilities that can do a better job of recycling in a specific plant that might otherwise dispose of the plastic in less desirable ways (such as in landfills), or in neighborhoods.In her previous position at California-based Denizen, she was helping to develop 3D-printed plastic bathrooms. There, she found out how difficult it was to switch from new plastic to recycled plastic: She experienced long lead times, high prices and minimum order sizes that were too big to be affordable. So the company went under.David Radin, Olivia Rangel and Georgia Crowther at Discovery Day 2024. Photo courtesy of Reclamation Factory. Coming back to Pittsburgh, she obtained a $5,000 grant to create a prototype recycling machine and did consulting to pay her personal bills. She pulled together resources from donated machines and used open source plans for very small-scale plastics recycling.With a subsequent $100,000 investment from Innovation Works’ Robotics Factory Accelerator, Crowther teamed with Olivia Rangel, a local project manager who had been at Carnegie Learning, to productize and market her creations.“My experience trying to buy recycled plastics made me know the applications here are obvious,” Crowther says. “I spoke to recyclers and people working in municipalities and managing sustainability departments about what is hard.”That made her realize that although her philosophy is that you can recycle it forever, that’s not how it works in the real economy. So she set the goal of taking the single-use plastic that is degrading the environment and turning it into long-term infrastructure, thus not needing to recycle it repeatedly.Her concept of making recycling hyperlocal makes it possible to reduce the need for the public to understand and differentiate between the types of plastics – highly recyclable PET (Polyethylene Terephthalate) typically used in soda bottles which displays No. 1 on its recyclable icon versus LDPE (High-Density Polyethylene – plastic No. 4) used in detergent bottles and pipes. These backsplash tiles are made by Reclamation Factory using entirely recycled plastic. Photo courtesy of Reclamation Factory. Instead, she teams up with individual factories, universities, sports complexes and other organizations that have smaller but significant amounts of plastic to recycle to create a more cost-effective way to repurpose their plastic waste locally instead of separating and shipping to large recycling facilities.“Our goal,” says Crowther, “is to remove all the intermediate steps, such as the costly expense of transportation” to make it less expensive and easier to recycle plastics that wouldn’t otherwise be recycled.Electronics ripe for recyclingSometimes, small changes can produce big potential wins. When it comes to electronics waste, recycling rates are low (20%) because it is so difficult.  According to Matt Travers, a senior systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, “When your flat panel display breaks down, you’re not calling the TV repairman.  Instead, you buy another one.” which leads to the problem of what to do with your old TV.Only certain parts of the back panel of a flat screen TV are able to be recycled. roboLoop aims to make that process more efficient. Photo courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University.Using technology that was inspired by a research partnership he conducted with Apple to help disassemble flat-panel displays, Travers launched roboLoop. Because there is no large resale market for old displays, the market for TV recycling is growing. With his robotics-based solution, a machine locates and removes screws from the backs of flat panel displays, thus saving the time previously spent by employees to find and unscrew them.A flat-panel display being prepared for recycling with the roboLoop robot. Photo courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University. Using methods like machine learning and 3D modeling for which CMU has become so widely known, his robots make it easier to reach the elements that can be recycled, thus removing the cost and increasing the percentage of parts that are actually recycled.Eventually, Travers hopes to use roboLoop technology to extract screws from internal components and recover rare elements used in the displays. For now, the first prototype has been installed in State College, Pa.Travers’ technique applies to more than just flat-panel displays. It can be used for phones and other electronic devices that have limited life spans.The post Is hyperlocal recycling the future? Two Pittsburgh companies say yes appeared first on NEXTpittsburgh. ...read more read less