Recycling Facility Recovers $400k Annually with Everestlabs AI and Robots on their Last Chance Line

This facility has a 25-degree inclined, cleated, last chance line that was impossible to have manual sorters or robots operate on. Consequently, they lacked data on the volume and types of recyclable materials sent to landfill via this line and were unable to recover any recyclables from it.

They were interested in understanding how much recyclable material was ending up in landfill through this line and exploring potential recovery methods.

After consulting with EverestLabs, they deployed RecycleOS AI on their last chance line.

After deploying RecycleOS, they discovered that they were losing almost 200 tons of valuable material per month to the landfill through their last chance line. Upon analyzing EverestLabs’ data, they implemented two changes aimed at enhancing plant-wide material recovery:

• Data revealed a significant loss of aluminum cans to the landfill so they made changes to upstream equipment and boosted recovery.
• The data on lost revenue provided sufficient justification for integrating robotics into their line. EverestLabs’ 6-axis robots, capable of operating on the challenging 25-degree inclined belt without plant retrofits, emerged as the optimal choice.

After operating RecycleOS for several months, the facility observed several significant findings.

• They discovered how much money and material they were losing by having an unmanned last chance line.
• They identified the potential to reclaim over $400,000 worth of plastics annually from this line using just two robots.
• EverestLabs robots demonstrated their worth within a short time frame; in fact, they paid for themselves in just three months and had a 80% pick success rate with 99% uptime.