ABB FlexPicker Robots in Curbside Recycling Plants

From hand-bundled newspapers in 1973 to AI cameras at Brooklyn's Sunset Park MRF, here is how ABB FlexPicker robots sort curbside recycling and what comes next.

INDUSTRIAL ROBOTICS

Chat With Robot

9/24/20261 min read

Curbside recycling started as a volunteer job. In 1973 a recycling center in Park Slope, Brooklyn, handled about three tons of newspapers a week, and people carried the bundles in by hand. Sorting happened at home, with paper stacked in one pile and glass and rinsed cans kept in others.

Man carrying a bundle of newspapers beside a tall stack of tied newspapers
Man carrying a bundle of newspapers beside a tall stack of tied newspapers

Bundled newspapers at a Park Slope, Brooklyn recycling center in 1973. Photo: Gary Miller, EPA DOCUMERICA / NARA via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Single-stream collection moved that work into the materials recovery facility, or MRF. Trucks tip everything into one heap, and screens, magnets and optical sorters split it apart. Whatever the machines miss still gets picked off fast belts by people. It is dirty, repetitive work, and plants struggle to staff it.

Large heap of flattened cardboard inside a recycling plant building
Large heap of flattened cardboard inside a recycling plant building

Cardboard and mixed recyclables on the floor of a materials recovery facility. Photo: Michael Barera / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

On September 23, Waste Dive reported that Circular Services has been running Greyparrot's Analyzer cameras at the Sunset Park MRF in Brooklyn. The AI found that 89 percent of the aluminum passing through was recoverable, about 91,000 cans a day. The two companies plan more tests this fall.

Mounds of mixed recycling under a high shed roof with sorting machinery below
Mounds of mixed recycling under a high shed roof with sorting machinery below

The tipping floor at the Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility in Brooklyn. Photo: Shuo Yan / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

A camera can count what slips past, but it can't lift a can off the belt. At a Burrtec MRF in Riverside, California, NRT installed 23 ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robots running its Max-AI vision. They grab items off the belt and drop them down chutes by material type.

Delta robot arms hanging over a stainless steel conveyor line
Delta robot arms hanging over a stainless steel conveyor line

ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robots picking items on a moving line. Photo: ABB

NRT has said it picked ABB for its global support and for RobotStudio, which lets engineers lay out and program a sorting line in simulation first. ABB's PickMaster software does vision-guided picking on packaging lines, and grabbing a moving item a camera has spotted is the same basic job a recycling belt needs.

Engineer at a laptop beside an enclosed ABB delta robot picking cell
Engineer at a laptop beside an enclosed ABB delta robot picking cell

An ABB FlexPicker cell set up with PickMaster software. Photo: ABB

I expect the next step to join the counting and the picking, so a plant knows what it missed and sends a robot after it. At home, a kitchen cobot along the lines of ABB's GoFa could one day rinse containers and sort them before they reach the bin. That would move the sorting back to where it began in 1973.

Three ABB GoFa collaborative robot arms of different sizes on a grey background
Three ABB GoFa collaborative robot arms of different sizes on a grey background

ABB's GoFa cobot family, with torque sensing in every joint. Photo: ABB

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