After China’s ecological breakthrough, robot technology could help humans

The world is sinking into waste and there are no countries that cannot fear this slow drowning in the swamp of our waste. Maybe robots will save us from waste?

We lived in a comfortable world, where our waste was easily and economically shipped mainly to China

and no one, neither the consumer nor the political institutions, ever cared about what happened to all the immense mass of waste that welfare produced at a continuous pace and in impressive quantities.

The day the Chinese government said stop, we woke up from our happy sleeps and found ourselves plunging into a deep abyss. 

We were not ready to deal with this emergency for two clear reasons: 

The first, caused by the sudden halt of Chinese imports, we realized that from an industrial point of view we were not ready to handle an immense mass of contaminated waste. 

The second is technological in nature, as the waste that was sent out of Western countries was of a low quality, with contamination in terms of mixed and poly-coupled plastics that made it difficult to use commercially. 

The solution could come from robotic technology that would increase and improve the arduous task that awaits us in the management of our waste at home. 

Robots can replace or implement machine operators in that part of the waste selection activity where the increase in the amount selected per day can increase the overall value of the waste treated. 

They can also increase the quality of the selection, allowing a more precise selection that combined with the increase in quantities should bring added value to the business, creating solutions compatible with the expected plastic waste management costs. 

Of course, robots have to be designed for a job for which they had not yet been employed, in fact, especially in the United States they are studying “It’s not just a question of how much we’re going to be able to do,” he said. 

Their operation is simple as they are guided by cameras that point to the waste transport tapes to be selected and interact with the sensors placed on mechanical hands. In addition, each movement they perform allows you to collect specific data that can be managed to mathematically analyze the work done. 

There are already talk of a miracle of robotics that will save us from the problem of waste that is strangling cities because the speed and quality of the selected waste would ease, in the intentions of the sector workers, the pressure on the accumulation of waste stocks and would bring induced economic benefits.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.