by CleanRobotics | May 19, 2020 | Uncategorized
These are troubling times, for businesses, families, individuals, and society. What about for the environment? While some look at the COVID-19 pandemic for all the bad it’s done, we’re choosing to look at it from a more positive planetary perspective.
For just a moment, we here at Sustainable Jungle invite you to metaphorically step outside your quarantines and self isolations to consider how coronavirus affects the circular economy, or one that would seek to eliminate waste at the source.
NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF COVID-19 ON THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY
The coronavirus pandemic has massively disrupted the recycling industry. In the U.S. especially, municipal recycling services like curbside pickup are on the chopping block. While some, like Salt Lake City, are continuing curbside pickup as normal, many have been suspended or terminated. Recycling centers themselves have closed down or banned drop-offs over fear of transmission from item to sorters.
While options to recycle plastics decrease, usage increases.
For sanitation, the medical industry is consuming even more than usual, including polypropylene N-95 face masks, polyethylene Tyvek suits, and good old PET medical face shields.
Individuals, too, are producing more household waste. The sharing economy (and services like renting clothing and thrifting) has taken a dive due to the virus’ highly contagious nature and ability to survive on surfaces for multiple days. Most simply aren’t taking chances. Far easier and safer to just throw something away.
We’re also ordering more online, buying less food in bulk, stockpiling groceries (especially non-perishables that often include more packaging), and ordering more take-out food (seeing as that’s the only way to “eat out”). Even if one wanted to replace plastic and styrofoam takeout containers with reusable ones, they wouldn’t be allowed.
Even zero waste paragon Lauren Singer humbly admitted to “sacrif[ing her] values and [buying] items in plastic [not] recyclable in NYC recycling or maybe even anywhere” for the sake of personal safety.
Just because grocery stores are banning reusable bags and plastic lobbyists are using “public health” as a convenient excuse to overturn the plastic bag ban, that doesn’t mean COVID-19 has us “bagging sustainability” altogether.
POSITIVE EFFECTS OF COVID-19 ON THE CIRCULAR ECONOMY
Despite increased plastic use in the home, overall plastic use has undoubtedly fallen with the halt of certain industries. Think about all those plastic cups not being used by airlines alone.
Physical waste, however, is only a small part of the environmental footprint. Truly sustainable living takes into account the unseen impacts of human operations, where we’re also seeing decreases. Business closures may be an economic bane but the office energy and employee transportation emissions saved are an environmental boon.
Mobility in general has slowed dramatically. Over 25% of Americans have been mandated to “shelter in place”. Australia and Europe face even stricter measures against non-essential travel, issuing hefty fines for anyone caught outside without an acceptable reason. These travel bans, shelter-in-place orders, and boardrooms gone chatrooms have left skies and interstates hauntingly empty. In turn, the price of oil plummets and slows petroleum production.
Satellite imagery reveals dramatic decreases in nitrogen dioxide pollution over China and Italy and city dwellers have witnessed the smog veil lifting. Environmental resource economist Marshall Burke stated, “The two months of pollution reduction has probably saved the lives of 4,000 children under 5 and 73,000 adults over 70 in China. That’s significantly more than the current global death toll from the virus itself.” While the death toll now exceeds those numbers, the vast number of lives saved by air quality improvements shouldn’t be discounted.
If news that carbon emissions have fallen by over half isn’t enough to make you feel a little hopeful, we’re not sure what will.
However, our brief planetary respite isn’t cause to rest on our quarantined laurels. What better time to look at sustainability habits in your own home than when you’re stuck there?
While a truly circular economy eventually needs to replace the whole system, it begins at home.
HOW TO RECYCLE BETTER WHILE SHELTERING IN PLACE
This is a time to do what you can for the planet in the confines of prioritizing your own health. Remember: you don’t need to be perfect, you just need to be better. So what are some ways we can reduce our impact while staying home?
First, reduce the plastic you can. Continue to use your reusables; most grocery stores allow reusable bags so long as YOU do the bagging.
Ordering online has now become ubiquitous and with it comes more styrofoam packaging waste, making proper recycling even more critical. If you can, at least try and support your local economy (and reduce shipping emissions) by ordering from a nearby store.
For plastic you do use or that comes with online shopping, just ensure you’re disposing of it properly. That might mean storing it if you have space until municipal services continue. Recycling comes with great intentions that rarely live up to expectations and contamination causes the majority of “recycled items” to end up in landfills anyway.
While innovations like the plastic-sorting TrashBot can vastly ease our problems here, humans still need to help. Like washing away food waste and preventing it from contaminating the batch. Get in the habit of washing your takeout containers and food packagings, like tin cans, glass jars, and plastic containers (as well as learn what number plastics are recyclable in your area).
FINAL THOUGHTS
Will these changes last post-pandemic? Will emissions spike back up once people are allowed to travel and the economy recovers?
Probably. But the extent will depend on us re-examining our definition of “need” and continuing the conserative, non-consumer habits we’ve developed. The pandemic shows we CAN get by with less, even something as “essential” as toilet paper (seriously, zero waste toilet paper isn’t an oxymoron!). It also depends on us voting with our dollar to demand change at the institutional level.
Big picture, COVID-19 represents an opportunity to make climate-positive choices and move toward a more circular economy. For companies, this means implementing teleworking wherever possible and making energy-saving investments. According to the International Institute for Sustainable Development, “Periods of high unemployment and low interest rates are the right time for new low-carbon investments and infrastructure, including the kind required to support the transition to clean energy.”
We’ve witnessed monumental-scale impact in a miniscule period of time. This pandemic is nothing if not proof that climate-positive change can happen and it can happen quickly. Despite all the year’s uncertainty, that’s pretty clearly inspiring.
For more stores on sustainability and recycling, please visit our friends over at Sustainable Jungle.
by CleanRobotics | Apr 22, 2020 | Uncategorized
In honor of Earth Day, the new models enable facilities to further optimize their sorting and recycling programs.
CleanRobotics Inc. announced today that it will begin offering two additional models of TrashBot, their automated waste sorting solution. TrashBot Zero is the world’s first automated waste sorting solution capable of managing 3-4 separate streams of waste (recyclable, compostable, landfill, etc.), while the TrashBot Slim is a smaller, more economical version of the original TRASHBOT, designed for forward-thinking office spaces and small businesses. These new models will help a wider range of customers maximize their recycling potential.
“The original TrashBot separates waste into two streams – recyclable from landfill. More recently we’ve seen a global shift towards three to four streams of waste, which motivated us to create TrashBot Zero,” said Tanner Cook, CleanRobotics co-founder and VP of Engineering.
“The fundamental issue is that humans get confused about where to put their waste, and this creates massive problems for recyclers,” said Charles Yhap, CleanRobotics co-founder and Chief Executive Officer. “TrashBots Slim and Zero allows our technology to be more accessible and affordable to a broader range of public facilities and work-places around the world, increasing our ability to make a difference in terms of carbon emissions and resource conservation.”
TrashBot Zero: Sorts up to Four Streams of Waste
TrashBot Zero is the world’s first automated waste sorting solution capable of identifying up to four separate categories, or streams, of waste. The robot is calibrated based on local recycling rules to maximize diversion from landfills with a sorting accuracy of over 95%, ensuring compliance with local waste rules and mitigating risks of fines. TrashBot Zero includes the CleanRobotics analytics platform, enabling the unit to perform waste audits, calculate diversion rates, determine potential cost savings, and provide granular data on the items collected – all in real-time. TrashBot Zero’s design makes it ideal for stadiums, cafeterias, and other high traffic facilities where visitors dispose of compostable food waste alongside common trash and recycling, increasing recovery of recyclable materials and decreasing contamination at an unprecedented rate. The included 55-inch display can help educate users with recycling tips configured based upon facility-specific challenges learned through the analytics platform.
TrashBot Slim: Powerful Features in Half the Footprint
Measuring 50% smaller than the original TrashBot, TrashBot Slim offers similar capabilities at a lower price point. The unit features a stainless-steel body, a 55” display, and the CleanRobotics analytics platform. TrashBot Slim’s size, price, and sorting accuracy of 95% for 2 streams makes it perfect for a variety of locations including office spaces and small businesses.
Smart Bins Save Time
Both TrashBot Zero and TrashBot Slim include capacity monitoring indicators to help custodians
optimize their workflow and spend less time checking bins. With visual notifications and direct communication, staff will always know when the bin needs to be emptied, making the need for manual checks obsolete.
Pricing & Availability
TRASHBOT Zero and TRASHBOT Slim will be available for order on April 22 with a one-year standard warranty. Pricing is dependent on the number of units ordered. For more information, visit https://cleanrobotics.com/contact-sales/
About CleanRobotics
CleanRobotics is focused on combining hardware, software, and the Internet of Things to bring new life to recycling programs and the circular economy. Founded in 2015, the CleanRobotics team is driven by the core belief that sorting waste before it reaches recycling facilities is the most effective way to retrieve and maintain the value of recyclable commodities. Their flagship product, TrashBot, has been proven to reduce contamination at the point of disposal with a sorting accuracy of 95%. For more information about CleanRobotics, please visit www.cleanrobotics.com.
© 2019 CleanRobotics Inc. All rights reserved. CleanRobotics and the CleanRobotics logo are registered trademarks of CleanRobotics Inc. Other trademarks, registered trademarks, and/or service marks, indicated or otherwise, are the property of their respective owners. All offers subject to change without notice or obligation and may not be available through all sales
channels.
(1) Specifications may vary depending on the model. (2) Accuracy statistics are based on real world data collected. Actual accuracy may vary depending on the facility as well as environmental factors, including calibration and types of waste. (3) Real time analytics require placement of the unit in a location with cellular network connectivity.
by CleanRobotics | Feb 23, 2020 | Uncategorized
No one likes dealing with trash. That’s a given, right? Yet whatever passes for tech in waste management hasn’t changed in decades. Looks like an outfit called CleanRobotics is ready to help us out, though, with their new TrashBot.
TrashBot looks like a commercial waste station on the outside–the kind of recycling and trash setup you’d see in some restaurants. Beneath its surface, however, CleanRobotics has created a system utilizing artificial intelligence, cameras and mechanical robotics to sort whatever you throw away into actual garbage and recyclables.
Sure, someone with mechanical ability could probably put this together in their garage, but they couldn’t claim, as CleanRobotics does, a 90% sorting accuracy rate–supposedly much more accurate than a human sorter.
It is, then, eminently useful, especially perhaps for small business owners who deal with a wide variety of waste matter but sometimes limited time to work out what to dispose of and what to recycle.
Read the full article here.
https://www.maxim.com/gear/trashbot-sort-recycling-for-you-2020-2
by CleanRobotics | Feb 13, 2020 | Uncategorized
At an office in San Francisco, if you drop a coffee cup in a robotic waste bin, the machine will automatically sort the cup for recycling. The office is one of the first to use the technology, called TrashBot, from a startup called CleanRobotics that is trying to solve a fundamental challenge in recycling: Even when someone is diligently trying to reduce waste, there’s a good chance they’re recycling wrong.
“The idea was really born out of frustration,” says Charles Yhap, cofounder and CEO of CleanRobotics, which is a semifinalist in the current IBM Watson AI XPRIZE. He points to the example of a store like Whole Foods, where anyone who eats at the salad bar then has to figure out which bin to use for their fork and box and cup. “I’ll eat my food and I go to throw something away and I’m confronted with an array of waste bins, and it’s just so confusing—everywhere you go, the rules are slightly different, and I’m still not sure that I’m doing it correctly.”
He thought that technology could help. “We started looking at the diminishing costs of sensors and robotic components and the increasing accessibility of algorithms and AI systems and we thought, maybe we can build something that does this better than people,” he says. It helped that current bins are already expensive—a single set in an airport might cost $1,200. “These are just shiny metal tubes that don’t do anything for you. So we thought we could build a robot that is price competitive and adds a ton more value.”
You can use the bin essentially like any trash bin, although you have to throw in one piece of trash at a time for the system to recognize it. When a bottle or container goes in the bin, the lid automatically closes, and a camera and sensors send data about the item to software that classifies it and sorts it into the correct internal bin. After three to five seconds, it’s ready for the next item.
Read the full article here.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90462635/this-robot-trash-bin-automatically-sorts-your-recyclables-for-you
