Who wants to sort through icky trash all day every day for low pay?
Not too many people.
But AI plus machines can pull a lot of value out of trash. Now there’s a win-win!
AI Is Being Used to Find Valuable Commodities in Our Trash
The White House’s push to boost domestic production of raw materials has turned attention to America’s waste stream
By Ryan Dezember, The Wall Street Journal, Jan. 7, 2026
-
AI-powered systems are transforming recycling by efficiently sorting materials, with facilities like Murphy Road processing up to 60 tons per hour.
-
Automation in recycling facilities is boosting profitability, as Waste Management reported an 18% increase in third-quarter profit in its recycling processing and sales segment despite a 35% drop in commodity prices.
New technologies, such as vision recognition combined with pneumatic blocks, offer faster and more accurate sorting than robotic pickers, handling thousands of items a minute…
The big breakthrough in recycling technology has been combining vision recognition systems with pneumatic blocks. Using puffs of air to separate items has proved much faster and more accurate than robotic pickers, which are limited to about 40 items a minute, compared with thousands for pneumatic systems…
Waste Management, the largest U.S. trash hauler and recycler, is spending more than $1.4 billion building and automating recycling facilities. The company, which goes by WM, reported an 18% increase in third-quarter profit in its recycling processing and sales segment despite commodity prices being 35% lower than a year earlier. Automation lifted the value of its output and reduced operating expenses, such as labor… [end quote]
Wendy