Artificial Intelligence : Norse Environmental Waste Services upgrades with AI-powered robotic automation from Recycleye

Leading waste management company NEWS (Norse Environmental Waste Services), part of the Norse Group, today announced details of its investment in AI-powered sorting at its MRF near Norwich. The robotic picking installation, retrofitted over a fibre line, has been designed to pick valuable missed recyclables such as mixed plastics, PET bottles and aluminium cans for recirculation.

Following market research, NEWS decided to invest in a robotic picker with Recycleye, a UK-based company that brings AI-powered automation to waste management worldwide. The investment will enable NEWS, part of the UK's largest LATCO (Local Authority Trading Company), to create more value from the co-mingled material supplied by Norfolk's 7 Borough, City and District Councils.

Commenting on the investment, Scott Martin, MRF Representative for the 7 councils that have a shareholding in NEWS through a joint venture arrangement, said: "As a consortium of councils, we are committed to exploring all opportunities to improve waste management and to working with NEWS through its MRF operation to maximise the potential for waste recycling, so we are pleased to see an investment of this nature as a tangible application of that commitment.

The waste picking robot, known as Recycleye QualiBot®, performs the physical tasks of identifying, picking and placing materials with consistently higher accuracy than human operators. The robot works alongside humans who continue to work in the company's MRF. The fibre line, which is located in a relatively dusty environment, was previously operated by two human pickers who were relocated to the facility.

The intelligent robotic picker is driven by an AI computer vision system that identifies individual items by material and object type. The AI system sits on top of NEWS' existing conveyor belt, giving the MRF manager full visibility of the waste stream and helping to improve the efficiency and operation of the facility's sortation processes.Using the dashboards provided as part of the Recycleye digital solution, the NEWS management team can view the compositional analysis of the line, tracking inputs and outputs to see how waste has been identified and recovered by the robotic solution. This helps the MRF manager to see the type of waste being processed, understand trends and identify any issues with sorting further down the line.

Commenting on the innovation, Dave Newell, Operations Director at NEWS, said: "We are looking forward to trialling AI and robotics for picking operations at our plant and the Recycleye QualiBot® solution was the perfect starting point for us as it can be retrofitted quickly and at low cost to our current belt. Investing in innovation is part of our strategic plan to improve our environmental performance and drive growth, and we are confident that this new technology will help us achieve this goal. We are already considering how Recycleye can help us meet the increased requirements of the MF regulations through material and product type identification.

Tom Harrison, Technical Sales Manager at Recycleye, added, "AI-powered robotics are adding value to sites like this one operated by NEWS across Europe. Using robotic automation in waste facilities to pick up missed valuables through automated recirculation is a perfect example of how automation is adding value to waste management, all visible and traceable through our customer dashboards. We are proud to be working with NEWS to add value in this way in Norfolk.