We all know a person or two who still hasn’t caught on to the importance of recycling, whether it be their location, or lack of interest, but a new invention developed by military research company Qinetic could still do their recycling for them. By incorporating a “hyperspectral camera” that can distinguish between all kinds of plastic, metal and glass based on their UV infrared colours, an automated recycling system would be able to pull out every potentially recyclable piece of material from a regular trash bag. Or better yet, could drastically increase the turnaround of our recycling plants by programming robots to filter all of the recycling at a faster speed than the hand sorting technique that’s currently used. It may not help the amount of trash that’s being pumped out, but at least it will help sort it.
Photo credit: How Stuff Works
