DENVER — Robots powered by artificial intelligence are making recycling more efficient in the Denver metro.
The Republic Services Denver recycling facility receives roughly 500 tons of material a day, coming in from Denver, metro area cities like Golden, Superior, Arvada, Lafayette and Louisville, and from mountain communities as far as Vail and Steamboat Springs.
General manager Steve Derus said the facility has already been using robots to sort material on conveyor belts for years, but the technology is getting better.
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New robots from the company Glacier use cameras and AI to better track and pick out certain types of material. Robotic arms move quickly to suction pieces on the belt, pick them and drop them into a chute, before continuing again.
Derus said they can handle 60-70 pick-ups per minute, while a human sorter can only do 40-50 in that time. He said on average, that’s saving the facility about 25 daily tons of residue, or waste that does not get recycled and ends up being trucked to a landfill.
“We're not replacing labor here, but we're moving the positions of a sorter into more technical positions,” Derus said. “Maintenance, you know, we have to grease and do preventive maintenance on all this equipment. We have equipment operators that load the line and also run forklifts and bail operators, and that's where we'd like to put our labor, into more skilled positions.”
Derus saidthe robots are filling a need because it’s difficult to fill sorter positions.
“Jobs like this that are, you know, a couple dollars above minimum wage, we do struggle to find people to come and work at facilities such as this,” he explained. “And we like when we do get them and they're good employees, we want to move them up. And the robotics [are] giving us the chance to move people up and off the sort line.”
The facility installed two of the Glacier AI robots earlier this year and could add more. Derus said each one costs about $90,000 to install, but also reduces waste and gives the facility better quality recycled material that can be re-sold for more.
“It's the way of the future,” Derus said.
In Commerce City, a new recycling facility is being built that will use only AI-powered robots for sorting.
