Sony Pixel Power calrec Sony

Trash to Cash: Recyclers Tap Startup with World's Largest Recycling Network to Freshen Up Business Prospects

14/06/2021

Matanya Horowitz smelled a problem in 2014.

Fresh out of CalTech with a Ph.D., he saw that recycling centers lacked robotics and computer vision to pick through heaps of garbage-contaminated recyclables.

Horowitz founded AMP Robotics that year to harness AI run on NVIDIA GPUs to turn sorting out the trash into cash.

It's a ripe opportunity. People worldwide produce 2 billion tons of waste a year, with 37 percent going to landfill, according to the World Bank.

Sorting by hand on conveyor belts is dirty and dangerous, and the whole place smells like rotting food. People in the recycling industry told me that robots were absolutely needed, said Horowitz, the company's CEO.

His startup, which has 130 employees, can double sorting output and increase purity for bales of materials. It can also sort municipal waste, electronic waste, and construction and demolition materials.

Neuron's Heaping Dataset AMP has collected one of the world's largest labeled datasets of images for recyclables with its Neuron AI platform.

It's well into the millions now, said Horowitz.

That's used in training its image recognition models, run on NVIDIA V100 Tensor Core GPUs. Training with such a massive dataset from packaging types from all over the world, different lighting conditions and many unique recycling businesses has provided AMP as much as 99 percent accuracy on inference.

A National Science Foundation grant in 2015 helped Horowitz hatch a small team to jump on the problem early.

AMP, based outside Boulder, Colo., has scooped up business with more than 40 recyclers. Along the way, the company has attracted $75 million in funding as it's become the rising star of AI for recycling. It recently landed on the Forbes AI 50, a list of the top AI companies to watch.

The company is a member of NVIDIA Inception, a virtual accelerator program that helps startups in AI and data science get to market faster. Direct connections to NVIDIA and training credits provided from the Inception program helped accelerate experimentation and innovation for AMP, said Horowitz.

Dirty Recyclables Ban Recyclers can't keep up with sorting. Tighter restrictions against contamination in recycled materials sent to China have made combing through it more work, creating more landfill. Worse yet for recyclers, these new added sorting costs come amid a tight labor market.

U.S. exports of plastic scraps to China have slid nearly 90 percent, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. Recycling processors worldwide are struggling to better sort trash to produce cleaner recyclables and stay in business.

The problem now for U.S. recyclers is that the costs of sorting domestically - if labor is even available - are close to the value of the materials on the commodities markets, said Horowitz.

GPU-Driven Recyclers AMP has changed the economics for recyclers. Its image classification models are deployed on NVIDIA GPUs to enable robot arms with suction cups to zip about conveyor belts, picking out trash to help.

The computer vision system for the robot arms can recognize an ever-expanding number of items. It can swiftly sort everything from Starbucks cups, PET plastic bottles and clamshell containers, to office paper, aluminum cans, hazards and many more items. The system identifies dozens of categories simultaneously.

The company's millions of labeled images drive its highly accurate image classification models, capable of identifying thousands of recyclables in milliseconds, so its robotic arms can sweep into action. AMP Robotics relies on NVIDIA GeForce RTX or V100 GPUs, depending on the recycling center, to run this split-second inference.

AMP uses the end-to-end NVIDIA workflow to train its Neuron AI platform. The system can train on over a billion types of garbage and recyclables and run on the network in real time. NVIDIA TensorRT enables a doubling in speed-up on inference and a 50 percent reduction in latency.

Because AMP keeps a fixed amount of computing resources for latency and inference, anything the company can do to accelerate existing networks allows the company to reinvest that into larger networks that unlock more performance.

The startup now has more than 120 recycling robots deployed worldwide. Its customers span the U.S., Spain, Japan, Canada and other countries that are soon to launch.

Accelerated Business Prospects Another capability AMP Robotics provides is data collection and analytics. This way recyclers can keep track in real time of how much revenue-generating materials are being collected and how much is being sent to landfill. Previously this was nearly impossible to track, Horowitz said.

AMP Robotics NVIDIA GPU-driven systems enable customers to bring costs down as well as sort plastics into different categories to achieve better returns. For instance, it can sort out HDPE color plastics, which is more valuable, from other plastics.

Also, the neural network can learn new materials over time, offering a wider range of sorting capabilities and new opportunities for revenue.

You can separate out by color, brand or form factor, and when you start to do this, you can make the material worth a lot more, he said.

Learn more about AMP Robotics from its GTC 2021 presentation.
LINK: https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2021/06/14/recyclers-tap-startup-worlds-...
See more stories from nvidia

Most recent headlines

05/01/2027

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be demoed at CES 2026

Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...

09/10/2026

Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026

September 10 2026, 06:00 (PDT) Dolby Expands Dolby OptiView Platform with New Capabilities at IBC 2026 New Sports Intelligence helps providers better unders...

07/10/2026

Dalet Flex LTS Delivers Smarter Media Operations from Ingest to Distribution

Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, today announced the latest Long-Term Supported (LTS) release of Dalet Flex. Build...

25/09/2026

SVG GameDay, Ep. 32: National Hockey Leagues John Bochiaro - Leading the Leagues In-Venue Efforts

In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...

25/09/2026

HBS Taps Ronald den Hollander as CEO

Infront has named Ronald den Hollander as CEO of its Host Broadcast Services (HBS) subsidiary, effective 1 October 2026. The appointment follows the previously ...

25/09/2026

NABA to Host Cyber University 2.0 Cybersecurity Summit in New York

The North American Broadcasters Association (NABA) will hold Cyber University 2.0, a full-day cybersecurity summit for the broadcast and media industries, on Tu...

25/09/2026

Alpha Networks and Ateme Deliver Low-Latency Video Platform for International Sporting Event

Alpha Networks and Ateme have delivered a joint video platform for the digital d...

25/09/2026

Viaplay Migrates Free-to-Air Channels to Encompass Altitude Scheduling

Encompass Digital Media has announced the migration of multiple Viaplay free-to-air channels - TV3, TV6, TV8, and TV10 - to its Altitude Scheduling platform. Al...

25/09/2026

NAB Show New York 2026 Set for October 21-22 at Javits Center

NAB Show New York 2026 will take place October 21-22 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City. Registration is open at nabshow.com/newyork. Th...

25/09/2026

NHL Network to Air NHL Tonight, NHL Now, NHL Tonight: First Shift, and On The Fly During 2026-27 Season

NHL Network has announced its studio programming lineup for the 2026-27 regular ...

25/09/2026

First Baptist Nashville Installs Clear-Com Arcadia Central Station

Clear-Com has announced that First Baptist Nashville has upgraded its production communications with a Clear-Com intercom system as part of a sanctuary technolo...

25/09/2026

Broadcast Management Group Upgrades to EVS XT-VIA Platform at Cloud Control Center

Broadcast Management Group (BMG) has deployed EVS XT-VIA live video production s...

25/09/2026

BBright Adds dotCentral as U.S. Sales and Support Partner

BBright, a Hexaglobe Group company, has announced that dotCentral has joined as a sales and support partner in the United States. BBright's portfolio cover...

25/09/2026

MeyerPro Deploys ROE Visual Graphite GP 2.6 for Acumatica Summit 2026

MeyerPro delivered audio, video, broadcast, and LED production for the Acumatica Summit 2026 at the Seattle Convention Center's Summit Building, January 25-...

25/09/2026

PWHL to Hold Inaugural All-Star Weekend in Toronto on March 7

The Professional Women's Hockey League has announced its inaugural All-Star Weekend, to be held Saturday, March 7, 2026, at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. The...

25/09/2026

Presidents Cup Makes Leap to 1080p HDR as NBC Sports, PGA TOUR Step Up Coverage

The 2026 Presidents Cup is underway at Medinah Country Club outside of Chicago with Team USA and an International Team of men's golfers facing off for four ...

25/09/2026

SVG Remote Production Forum Goes Inside WBDs Techwood Facility, Maps the Next Phase of REMI Production

Warner Bros. Discovery's Atlanta hub hosted a day of discussion on REMI prod...

25/09/2026

Antares release AutoTune Advanced

Algorithm update & new DVA vibrato-detection engine A new flagship version of Antares' iconic pitch-correction software has arrived, and along with a co...

25/09/2026

Two notes to launch the Captor X Pro

New flagship unit to arrive in early 2027 Two notes Audio Engineering have revealed that a new and improved version of their hugely popular reactive load bo...

25/09/2026

Finalist 2 from Tim Exile

AI-free mixing tool gets an upgrade Launched in October 2025, Tim Exiles Finalist is an algorithmic mixing tool that's been designed for those who don&#...

25/09/2026

Rohde & Schwarz Mobile Test Summit 2026 puts the spotlight on 6G - registrations open

Rohde & Schwarz Mobile Test Summit 2026 puts the spotlight on 6G - registrations...

25/09/2026

IBC 2026: When Intelligence Became the Industry's New Competitive Advantage

In our latest blog, Tim Pearson reflects on IBC 2026 and considers the main learnings against an industry that saw AI finally coming out of the labs and into pr...

25/09/2026

Digital Anarchy Releases Newest Version of its Real-Time Skin Retouching Tool for Video

Digital Anarchy Releases Newest Version of its Real-Time Skin Retouching Tool fo...

25/09/2026

Blackmagic Design Used on More Than 50 Summer Films in 2026

Blackmagic Design Used on More Than 50 Summer Films in 2026 Brie Clayton September 25, 2026 0 Comments Hero image: Disclosure Day Blackmagic Design p...

25/09/2026

How I Automated Social Media Resizing in After Effects - Free Script

How I Automated Social Media Resizing in After Effects - Free Script Graham Quince September 25, 2026 0 Comments If your text keeps getting cut off on...

25/09/2026

IBC2026 celebrates collaborative breakthroughs as it anno...

IBC has unveiled the winners of the prestigious IBC2026 Innovation Awards at an event held at the RAI Amsterdam on Sunday 13 September, honouring collaborative ...

25/09/2026

IBC2026 brings global media industry together to turn inn...

IBC2026 brought the global media, entertainment and technology community together for four days of business, innovation and collaboration at the RAI Amsterdam. ...

25/09/2026

Lightware Helps Integrators Overcome MacBook Neo USB Topo...

Lightware testing has revealed that each USB-C port on Apple's new MacBook Neo consumes three of the seven USB tiers available under the USB specification, ...

25/09/2026

Lightware Expands Education Support With New Products and...

Lightware is supporting educational institutions in building modern learning environments by combining professional training with education-focused AV technolog...

25/09/2026

Study: Only 10% of Young Adults Watched Local TV News Last Week

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/09/2026

Optimum, A+E Global Media Sign New Distribution Agreement

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/09/2026

MPA, Unions Back 'Motion Picture, Television, and Entertainment Revitalization Act

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/09/2026

NAB Show New York Announces More Speakers and Programming Highlights

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/09/2026

Comcast NBCU, NBCUniversal Local Award $2.5 Million to Nonprofits

Share Copy link Facebook X Linkedin Bluesky Email...

25/09/2026

Orange Belgium Strengthens Its Consumer and B2B TV Servic...

Long-Standing Customer Renews Multiyear Contract for VO's Secure Video Player, Content Security, and Device Monitoring Solutions Viaccess-Orca (VO), a glob...

25/09/2026

Automate Video Progress Bars in After Effects - No Keyframes!

Automate Video Progress Bars in After Effects - No Keyframes! Graham Quince September 24, 2026 0 Comments Learn how to create an automated video playb...

25/09/2026

How to watch an unmissable weekend of womens football on Sky Sports and NOW

Friday 25 September 2026 How to watch an unmissable weekend of women's football on Sky Sports and NOW Sky Sports and NOW will broadcast seven live games f...

25/09/2026

YAGA trailer released, coming exclusively to Sky and NOW on 31 October in the UK and Ireland

Friday 25 September 2026 YAGA trailer released, coming exclusively to Sky and N...

25/09/2026

'Watch this space: a new strategic direction for UK media'.

Watch this space: a new strategic direction for UK media. Arqiva has submitted its response to the Governments Green Paper on the future of television distribut...

25/09/2026

Last chance to apply to be part of this year's Late Late Toy Show

Want to be part of this year's Late Late Toy Show? Final call for applications in search for this year's stars The most wonderful night of the year is...

24/09/2026

Broadcast Management Group Assists Virginia Public Media With Move to New HQ in Richmond

Broadcast Management Group (BMG) is supporting Virginia Public Media (VPM), the ...

24/09/2026

Two Red Digital Cinema Cameras Receive GhostFrame Pro Certification

RED Digital Cinema's RED V-RAPTOR [X] and RED V-RAPTOR XL [X] cameras with the Phantom Track feature are the first cameras to receive GhostFrame Pro Certifi...

24/09/2026

FOX Sports Adds 4K Live Stream on Tubi to List of Available Options for Cowboys-Eagles on Thanksgiving Day

Bringing together the full family of networks, FOX Sports is also adding Tubi, F...

24/09/2026

Virginia Techs Lane Stadium Invests in Gameday Experience with New Daktronics LED Display, Audio Solutions

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) has unveiled...

24/09/2026

SVG AI Innovation Lab Blog Tracks How AI Is Reshaping Live Sports Production

The blog collects SVG's reporting on AI across U.S. and European sports broadcasting Since SVG launched the AI Innovation Lab in April to advance the devel...

24/09/2026

SVG TranSPORT Keynote Conversation: How FOX Built a Transcontinental Transmission Backbone for the FIFA World Cup

SVG's annual TranSPORT conference, which will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 20 in...

24/09/2026

FloSports is Using AI To Build a New Generation of Live Production Tools to Bolster the Streamer's Internal Operations

The self-built Master Control Room has cut streaming operations incident-respo...

24/09/2026

Ortana Links AudioShake, ScorePlay for Live and Archive Audio Cleanup

Ortana Media Group, the software systems integrator behind the Cubix workflow platform, has connected AudioShake's audio separation models to ScorePlay thro...

24/09/2026

AudioShake Debuts Multi-Speaker 2.0 for Separating Overlapping Voices

AudioShake has released Multi-Speaker 2.0, the company's newest Multi-Speaker model, which removes 75% more noise and offers 32% better separation of overla...

24/09/2026

Op-Ed: Planning Media Day When the Calendar Isn't Certain - How MLB Clubs Can Prepare for 2027 Now

By Jon Morgan, Founder and Executive Producer, Ryval Studios For Major League B...