Photo: Anna Shvets/Pexels
Cities are looking to artificial intelligence to help improve their waste management. In East Lansing, a Michigan university town where students make up over half of the 50,000 residents, items like plastic bags, Styrofoam and plastic film often end up in the municipal recycling stream. The city began a pilot program in 2022 to deliver more personalized messages. Recycling trucks equipped with AI-powered computers and cameras identify and photograph non-recyclable items in household recycling bins. The geotagged photo is sent in a postcard to the bin owner. Over 24 weeks, contamination decreased by more than a fifth. In Canada, the city of Leduc, Alberta, launched a similar pilot in 2023 to keep non-organic materials out of municipal compost carts, and contamination dropped from 68% to 9% this year.
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