NextGen Consortium launches AI sorting study

The NextGen Consortium, a multiyear industry collaboration addressing single-use foodservice packaging materials, has launched a study leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze the polypropylene (PP) material stream. NextGen will conduct this study with its managing partner, New York-based Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy, and London-based Greyparrot, an AI waste analytics platform. 

The collaboration aims to track and categorize objects in the PP stream and determine the volume of valuable food-grade material passing through the system.  

“Ensuring that recovery infrastructure can keep pace with a rapidly growing and diverse material stream is critical to advancing the circular economy, alongside solutions such as material innovation, reduction and reuse,” says Kate Daly, managing director and head of the Center for the Circular Economy at Closed Loop Partners. “An important part of our work in the NextGen Consortium is identifying opportunities for data collection and analysis that can advance the circularity of foodservice packaging, and drive greater value for stakeholders across the system, including brands, innovators, infrastructure operators and consumers.” 

As part of this project, Greyparrot’s analyzer units will be installed above the PP recovery conveyor belts at four United States material recovery facilities (MRFs): Balcones Recycling, Texas; Cougles Recycling, Pennsylvania; Rumpke Recycling, Ohio; and Eureka Recycling, Minnesota. Greyparrot’s AI-powered computer vision system will use cameras to capture images of objects in the PP stream, aiming to quantify and qualify the materials flowing through the MRFs. The AI model will look to categorize each object based on material, format, financial value and brand, as well as distinguish food- and nonfood-grade material. Greyparrot’s units will then send that data to an analytics dashboard in real time, NextGen says. 

“We use artificial intelligence to gain continuous and reliable visibility into recycling streams,” says Sarah Foster of Greyparrot. “This helps us improve recycling operations by placing waste intelligence into the hands of the people who are recovering, redesigning and remanufacturing the objects we throw away. We are thrilled to work with our U.S. partners towards our vision of a future where every piece of waste is valued as a resource.” 

The collaborative project will run for more than six months, during which it will gather data on the composition of PP bales over time, while accounting for seasonality. NextGen says this insight can help determine the potential value in these streams, identify materials that might be coming through unintentionally, shed light on the presumed volume of food-grade materials being captured and present opportunities for recovery and separation into distinct value chains. 

According to NextGen, this project can advance a circular economy for valuable materials, improve material quality delivered to recycling facilities and enhance the value of recyclable commodities shipped to U.S. end markets. 

“A lot is unknown about the curbside polypropylene stream today,” says Curt Cozart, president of Common Sense Solutions and technical advisor for the project. “Filling these knowledge gaps can increase the pace of development for material recovery. Understanding the composition of the stream in a large-scale study highlights potential, reduces risk for pioneers and accelerates better design implementation. This study will be the catalyst to developing much larger-scale recycling of polypropylene.” 

The NextGen Consortium says it has been involved in PP recovery since 2021 when it joined The Recycling Partnership’s Polypropylene Recycling Coalition as a Steering Committee member. Through this initiative, the group says it has helped fund equipment grants for MRFs to effectively capture PP packaging and improve community recycling access rates. The NextGen Consortium says it is committed to driving recycling rates by also supporting the recovery of postconsumer recycled content that can be reincorporated into packaging. 

The NextGen Consortium says it continues to invite additional MRFs to participate in the project to gain a better understanding of what is flowing through material streams and identify ways to drive more value to the system.

This article was edited Sept. 13, 2023, to correct the headquarters location of Cougles Recycling.