Last year Family Champions, a local volunteer group,
ran a sophisticated recycling effort. The payoff was that if they could
accumulate a cargo container full of a particular type of recyclable, then a volume
recycler would pay for it, otherwise it was just trash. So we separated
plastics by the 7 different recycling numbers, plastic bags, paper milk
containers with the plastic nozzles removed, newspaper, office paper, glass by
color, etc.
The operation worked in a vacant warehouse with dozens of
large containers and required a large staff of volunteers. Ultimately it was
just too much effort, partly because most people weren’t willing to do the
detailed separation: we had 14 different containers in the basement, and even
with the detailed instructions we still weren’t sure what to do with some
items.
Our volume of trash/garbage decreased by over 2/3, so you
see how much of our trash is relatively easily recyclable. Our new home will
have a garbage disposal, and we are estimating how much this will reduce our
volume of garbage, and also cut smells. Our daughter maintains a compost pile and
that consumes most of her garbage.
So we are looking at a major change, possibly reducing our trash/garbage
to almost zero!
There are many different forms of recycling:
- Compost piles
- Trash collection
- Special collection days
- Separating recyclables into different containers
- Dealing with special and hazardous materials: batteries,
paints, electronics, etc.
- Large item pickup or drop off
- Donations to charities
- Selling items on the Internet or through the local newspaper
- Running a yard sale
- Church and community sales, etc.
In some cases you can just put things out with your garbage
and trash, perhaps in special containers; in other cases you need to drive
somewhere, or you need to make special arrangements. All of these take some
degree of thought and effort on your part.
There are several challenges to achieving
effective recycling:
- Convincing each person to commit to recycling
- Knowing what is recyclable and what isn’t
- Knowing what to do with each type of recyclable item
- Having a place to put items waiting for recycling
- Knowing when you can take the recycling
- Making time to take the recycling
- Taking your collection to the recycling location(s), be it
your curb or driving there
- Cleaning up any mess made by the recycling process.
This requires time, thought, space, and other resources. Many people aren't willing or able to put forth this effort.
What if you could just take each item as it comes to hand
and put it in a waiting container, and it would be whisked away for the proper
treatment? That’s the promise of Autonomous Recycling!
We are using Autonomous Vehicles to take each item as you
are finished with it and take it to the appropriate place.
You may be preparing a meal and finish a milk carton, or
peel a peach, or finish a bottle with a deposit, or finish reading your
newspaper. You just want to drop the item and be done with it.
Why can’t a suitable container be waiting, for example, in
place of your trashcan? When you drop something in, an Autonomous Vehicle comes
and takes it away, replacing the container for your next recyclable item.
The item is then autonomously identified and taken to the
appropriate place. The disposition can include standing instructions from you, for
example, whether to take bottles with deposits to the Boy Scouts, or a
redemption center. Or you may give some explicit instructions for a particular
item, for example take it to your upcoming community yard sale.
You might think this is to difficult or expensive to
automate, but the post office already does automatic address decoding, and decoding
recycling labels is easy by comparison. Real-time chemical analysis on a chip
is here now, we could even distinguish the type of garbage automatically. And these
technologies are still in the early stages of development, so inexpensive
analysis is going to be routine. This isn’t a technological challenge in the
future!
If the item needs some preparation, such as rinsing out a
soda bottle or a milk carton, the container is taken to the appropriate
location for autonomous washing or other treatment. For example to determine
whether it is suitable for reuse or needs to be scrapped: does the TV still
work, it is good enough to be sold, donated, or does it need to be recycled.
My daughter used to work in an electronics recycling center,
screening items and then doing partial disassembly. The treatment depends on
the current value of the various components, for example, copper is quite
valuable, but CRTs are just hazardous waste, but some day the phosphorus or glass may be valuable enough to recover.
Our first family TV was rescued from a neighbor’s trash; I
picked it up for the parts, but turned I it on and behold it worked, so we used
it for a year until my wife and I built a Heathkit GR-269 TV – a fun joint
project.
Using Autonomous Vehicles to collect and distribute, and using
Autonomous Actors to separate and process all recyclables, a Sustainable Community
might turn a profit from the recyclables, and in the process reduce or even
eliminate its waste stream completely, and generate some energy.
And it will take even less of your and my time and effort –
everyone wins.
