Recycling Facility Uses Compact Robots to Recover over $250k of HDPE Annually

This MRF originally had four manual sorters stationed on their last chance line and were not gathering data on the volume and value of recyclable material they were losing to landfill. This lack of data, along with ongoing labor challenges and goals of increasing material recovery to align with their corporate initiatives, led them to explore implementing AI and robotics on their last chance line.

They deployed two RecycleOS AI systems on their last chance line. After one month of analyzing data, they found they were losing an average of 218,000 HDPE containers per week (28,000 containers of HDPE color, 100,000 containers of HDPE natural, and 90,000 containers of HDPE white). This is an average loss of $7,350/week amounting to roughly $380k annually. They then decided to deploy two EverestLabs’ robots to recover these two valuable materials

After having RecycleOS installed several things stood out to ACI.

• They wanted access to data like material characterization and value lost to landfill to help them optimize their operations to increase recovery upstream.
• EverestLabs provides remote 24/7 AI and robotics performance monitoring that ensures performance and reliability.
• Placing EverestLabs robotics on their last chance line allowed them to increase material recovery while moving their 4 last chance line manual sorters to better and safer jobs.

After utilizing EverestLabs’ AI and robotics for 5 months, they found that:

• The EverestLabs’ robots recover an average of 102,000 containers (HDPE color, HDPE natural, and HDPE white) per week.
• This increase in recovery generates an additional average revenue of $4,800 per week amounting to roughly $250k annually.
• The robots have a 100% uptime during operating hours ensuring maximum material recovery.

Since the labor costs for a sorter on their last chance line cost more than the price of RecycleOS, they saw an instantaneous payback on their investment. In fact, by adding robotics into their facility, they immediately saved $34k per year on labor costs.