Amazon -backed Glacier gets $ 16 million to expand the robot recycling fleet

The world has a garbage problem. It is expected that the amount of things we throw will double 3.8 billion metric tonsBy 2050. Reducing what we use will have a long way to address the problem, but let’s face it, we are not good to buy less as well.

This leaves recycling, which has its own problems. People routinely try to recycle dirty yogurt cups or throw plastic in the aluminum box. All this makes recycling more expensive because, in the end, someone should choose unwanted things manually.

In response, many companies were building automatic systems to sort recyclable materials, including IcebergA 6 -year -old company developed Importing weapons are inexpensive It is controlled by the computer vision to determine more than 30 different types of materials.

The startup company has published its robots in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Vinix and Alan Seattle.

Since Glacier is looking to expand the robot fleet to more municipalities, it recently raised the A series of $ 16 million, according to the company Techcrunch exclusively.

The tour was led by the Ecological System Safety Fund with the participation of Allycorp, Alumni Ventures, Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, COX, Alesium, New Enterprise Associas, one small planet, interference property, VSC interview, and a working capital box.

Rebecca is Hols, co-founder and executive director of GLACIER, to Techcrunch, that material recovery facilities-or MRFS, are called sorting facilities-are pressured on both sides. Governments want to recycle more waste, but MRFS has difficulty finding enough people to use the sorting line.

On the level of industry, it is very high. Mrif Model will have to rent five times a year to fill one sorting position. The job is so unwanted that one of the MRF operators told HU-thethrams that although his wages were higher, he was worried about the loss of workers in a new warehouse that opened nearby.

“Do you prefer to stand in a conveyor belt and sort through the trash, or do you prefer to raise the boxes in the air conditioner warehouse?” He said. “This type of dilemma confirms many of our customers.”

Glacier offers her robots to clients as explicit purchases or a rental model to a king. It encourages MRFS to make reforms that feel comfortable with it, and provide them with training and spare parts. For those who do not prefer, startup provides maintenance packages.

GLACIER also offers a data product, where MRFS and other stakeholders such as consumer products and government agencies can pay for visions around the waste course. For MRF, this may mean determining where the aluminum cans lose value to the landfill. For a company or organizer, this may mean scrutiny of the waste current to determine whether the package designed to recycle it is already recycled.

With enough robots, recycling rates should improve, if robots are faster and better in distinguishing between recycling and garbage materials.

“Every time we send people to audit our artificial intelligence systems, people do much worse,” said Arib Malik, CTO from Glacier and the second co -founder. “Amnesty International is really strong, and it is able to distinguish between what people can notice.”