Yep, I've worked in recycling for 6 years and am well aware that there's a lot of broken parts. My point was that if a PET bottle goes into a single stream system, the recycling industry is pretty good at capturing it, baling it, and selling it to a plastics processor. That processor will clean it, pellet it, and sell it as rPET. 85% of PET bottles that end up in curbside single stream end up getting recycled. I'd like that number higher, but it's where things are at the moment. Throw a bottle in the trash, it's getting landfilled/burned. Throw it in recycling, it's most likely getting recycled.
Based on the single stream comment, I'm going to assume you're describing an experience in North America, and your assumptions are pretty off base for PET bottles.
Figure 1 in the linked paper gives the raw numbers for where PET bottles end up. [1]
I work on a similar type of application (AI connected to a robot arm that sorts recycling). This looks pretty efficient for a few reasons.
- Consistent lighting is crucial for the most efficient AI. Full overhead enclosure makes this way easier
- Gantry style robot is MUCH lighter and easier to repair than both a 6-axis arm or even a delta robot. It's also likely an order of magnitude cheaper than other options
- Gantry robot also makes it pretty modular if they need to modify for different crop widths
Recycling facilities everywhere use tech like this (near infrared) at an industrial scale [0], and sorting robots that use AI is a rapidly growing industry [1]
There's a few reasons I wouldn't feel comfortable calling anything made of recycled plastic food safe, but my biggest is from the huge variety of additives that go into products. These don't necessarily play nice with the remelt process. We did do some work on making your own bowls and the like from bio materials though. [0]
When it comes to mechanical properties, they don't change very much as long as you're creating a consistent material with your melt. The t-beam question comes back to basic physics calculations using elastic modulus and allowable stresses of whatever plastic goes into it.
That's a good question. Sadly there's definitely microplastics involved. Research into microplastic effects is still in very early stages. When you're creating any sort of dust (wood, metal, plastic, etch) particles around humans it's a good idea to have a dust mask at minimum.
My understanding is that most of the microplastic concerns at the moment are about how they're reaching our water sources and oceans. The amount being produced just by washing clothes is relatively scary.
Sounds like you might be excited to check out the new academy we launched. There's a ton of new unlisted videos there too :) I'd take a look at the Spaces chapter. [0]
Collection is fairly amorphous at the moment, but that means there's so many options for you! We've laid out some ideas, but like past versions I definitely expect to be blown away by how the community continuously improves on the ideas and figure out what works best. This one will also vary the most depending on your location in the world. [1]
I spent a solid chunk of the last year contributing to this project and would be happy to answer any questions.
I commonly see Hacker News discussions on how plastic recycling is a waste of time/energy. The EPA's models feel otherwise, estimating one ton of recycled plastic saves 5,774 Kwh of energy, 16.3 barrels of oil, 98 million BTU's of energy, and 30 cubic yards of landfill space. [0][1]
One of the principles that started this project was the idea that recycling waste wood or metal is generally understood by your common DIYer, but is much less true for waste plastic. The team definitely feels like reducing plastic waste is the most important step, but we can also put the plastic around us to additional use.
While this is really neat, the 595s also feature some nicer padding on the headband. Probably not enough for the price difference, but I just wanted to note that the piece of foam is not the only difference between the two.
From your description in another comment, it seems like you've used 'status feed' when the more appropriate term is 'news feed.' As far as I can tell you're not saying that the companies can post public statuses; you're saying they show up in your personal news feed. There's a big difference.