Of the 8.3 billion tons of virgin plastic waste created each year, despite decades of efforts to reduce the amount that ends up in landfills, only about 9 percent gets recycled.
London-based computer vision startup Recycleye looks to give those recycling numbers a big boost with its AI-driven system for identifying waste materials.
By automating and speeding the movement of materials through sorting systems, and identifying them with more precision, Recycleye says it can significantly increase capacity for recycling companies while upping the overall recovery rate.
Pretty lofty promises from a two-year-old company that started in the most unglamorous of ways.
We went out and collected trash from bins, took it back to my garage, and started building our first proof-of-concept, said Peter Hedley, chief technology officer at Recycleye, which is a member of the NVIDIA Inception accelerator program for AI startups.
One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure Hedley and Dewulf, co-founders of Recycleye. Hedley and company co-founder and CEO Victor Dewulf started discussing the possibilities of their technology during their masters' work at the Imperial College of London, where they worked on applying computer vision to waste streams.
Dewulf ultimately wrote a paper on the topic, got interest from academia and industry, and then left his job as an analyst at Goldman Sachs to start working on a Ph.D. so he could refine his idea. The next thing Hedley knew, Dewulf had him dumpster diving and developing the idea into a commercial product.
Buoyed by acceptance into Microsoft's AI accelerator program, they found themselves on the receiving end of an £800,000 (about $1.1 million) seed investment, followed by another £400,000 in grants in 2020.
By the end of 2020, the startup had already proven itself with the top waste-management firms in the U.K. Last April, they partnered with energy leader TotalEnergies and recycling pioneer Valorplast on the OMNI project, one of seven winning projects selected by nonprofit French sustainability company Citeo.
An AI on Closing the Recycling Loop To date, effectively recognizing and separating items that have contained food from other items has not been possible. However, a crucial step in improving recycling rates is to optimize the quality of recycled materials that are passed on to plastic manufacturers.
Recycleye's partnership with Valorplast and TotalEnergies focuses on the application of AI to identify food-grade and nonfood-grade plastic packaging with the goal of increasing the circular recycling of these products. It could even help in the development of new applications, such as improved food packaging.
Recycleye has also partnered with universities to create WasteNet, an open-source database that is now the world's largest waste dataset, with more than 2.5 million training images.
Recycleye is an NVIDIA Metropolis partner, providing offerings that integrate the full Metropolis stack for video analytics inference. The Recycleye team uses the NVIDIA Jetson platform and dug into accelerated deep learning tools such as pretrained models, the NVIDIA TAO Toolkit and the NVIDIA DeepStream SDK.
With the NVIDIA tools and huge training dataset behind it, Recycleye has slashed the time it takes to deploy its model from an unworkable two months down to just two hours, while achieving accuracies exceeding human vision in identifying items.
The company's devices run on the network's edge, doing all computations onsite, provided there's sufficient internet connectivity. Models are trained in the cloud, on a GPU-enabled instance of Microsoft Azure, and then deployed to Recycleye's devices at client sites.
Algorithms are automatically updated on client devices during software updates. The cloud system also processes data logs and provides the client with dashboard summaries of that data.
A Recycleye intelligent picking system. Coming: Global Expansion and More Robots Recycleye also develops robots powered by Recycleye Vision, jointly with FANUC, one of the world's largest robotics manufacturers. Having already installed Recycleye Vision and Recycleye Robotics in the U.K. and France earlier this year, Hedley expects more waste companies will follow suit to automate their manual sorting with robotics.
But Recycleye has much bigger aspirations now that it has a scalable system that can be deployed globally, and Hedley said that the more deployments the company does, the better its technology will get.
When we have a device at both the end and the front of a line, we can see what happens if the quantity of material increases, but the quality decreases, said Hedley. We can start optimizing machinery and configuration, and start having machines making decisions.
Most recent headlines
11/12/2025
Dalet, a leading provider of cloud-native, end-to-end media workflow solutions, ...
06/12/2025
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. A new survey from Pixitmedia by Datacore revealed a major shift in the Media & Entertainment industry in media archiving, with 85% of resp...
06/12/2025
HACKENSACK, N.J. LiveU has announced that the national public broadcaster Czech Television has completed one of the largest LiveU live production deployments fo...
06/12/2025
NEW YORK The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) presented the Excellence in Production Technology Emmy Award to NASA+ and Dr. Tom Leight...
05/12/2025
2025 Sports Broadcasting Hall of Fame: Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nati...
05/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: Veritone's Sean King on the Power of Mining Video, Audio DataThe company's Data Refinery offers users total control and governance over da...
05/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: Inside the Nashville Predators' Unified, Flexible, Sca...
05/12/2025
Netflix Reaches Agreement To Acquire Warner Bros. Following Planned WBD SplitThe deal does not include WBDs sports assets like TNT Sports (US, UK, LatAm), Euros...
05/12/2025
FOX Sports Returns to Indianapolis for Primetime Broadcast of Big Ten Championsh...
05/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Digital Engagement & Monetization Workshop Tackles the ...
05/12/2025
Atlanta United Lights Up New Emory Healthcare Studio With First Live Broadcast f...
05/12/2025
As Messi Takes the Pitch, MLS, Apple, NEP Roll Out Largest MLS Cup Production Ev...
05/12/2025
ESPN Enters College Football's Most Intense Month With Elevated Workflows fo...
05/12/2025
It's about that time! Awards season is in full swing, and the Film Independe...
05/12/2025
Every year, Spotify Wrapped offers a personalized look back at the audio that defined your year. It's a snapshot of your listening habits, designed to tell ...
05/12/2025
In 2025, Spotify's EQUAL, GLOW, and RADAR programs celebrated women, LGBTQIA , and emerging artists who turned moments into milestones. From breaking record...
05/12/2025
In our latest blog, we explain how Wi-Fi 7 rollouts can drive consumer loyalty with value-add services such as consumer cybersecurity. We also explore how this ...
05/12/2025
LOS ANGELES Netflix announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Nielsens Gracenote has launched Gracenote Content Connect, a new ad platform that provides agencies, brands, supply-side platforms (SSPs) and demand-si...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK In an most important update to the workings of deal-based programmatic advertising, IAB Tech Lab has released version 1.0 of its Deals API for public c...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Pass the turkey. Pass the stuffing. Pass the cranberry sauce. All are common requests of Americans celebrating Thanksgiving Day with family and f...
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
HOLLYWOOD, Calif. Netflix announced today that it has entered into an agreement to acquire the assets of Warner Bros. for $82.7 billion....
05/12/2025
NEW YORK Iris, the new cloud-connected camera control platform, has officially launched with features that turn virtually any PTZ camera into a software-connect...
05/12/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has approved AT&T's $1.02 billion acquisition of spectrum from UScellular in a decision that was issued sho...
05/12/2025
The Best Coldplay Songs: 21 Tracks That Shoot for the Stars From Yellow to Viva La Vida, Fix You to Paradise, this playlist goes back to the start.
December ...
05/12/2025
Zafris Lecture Series Brings Nabil Ayers to Berklee The 32nd annual James G. Zafris Distinguished Lecture series was held on Thursday, November 13, with guest...
05/12/2025
Friday 5 December 2025
A new Game of Thrones Tale: Official trailer for Sky Exc...
05/12/2025
Back to All News
Don Lee, Lee Jin-uk, and Lalisa Manobal to Star in Netflix Act...
05/12/2025
Tis the season of giving once again and this year we've taken our Give Back Fridays' concept and turned it on its head.
In the autumn we were approach...
05/12/2025
Brayden Gogis doesn't remember a time when he wasn't completely fixated on games in all forms. In preschool, when they asked us to dress up as what we ...
05/12/2025
The Grinch steals the spotlight as the theme for The Late Late Toy Show 2025
Tune in tonight at 9:35pm on RT One and worldwide on RT Player
#LateLateToyShow...
05/12/2025
RT Announces New Presenters of Flagship News Programmes
New RT Six One News co-presenter Tommy Meskill
Sarah McInerney & Justin McCarthy join Morning Ir...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir Blackmagic Design HyperDeck Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & ...
04/12/2025
ToolsOnAir AJA Ki Pro Event Presets for just:in mac pro 2025 & just:in linux
More Details:Starting with version 5.5, both just:in mac pro and just:in linux sol...
04/12/2025
Wangu Kanuri from Kenya and Godwin Asediba from Ghana are two of this years finalists for Thomsons Young Journalist of the Year Award. The pair are runners-up i...
04/12/2025
SVG Sit-Down: ProximaVision's Claudio Lisman on Why Tethered Drones Could Be...
04/12/2025
SVG Campus Shot Callers: Imry Halevi, Senior Associate Director of Athletics, Co...
04/12/2025
Platinum White Paper: LiveU Lightweight Sports Production: A Step Change in Spor...
04/12/2025
London to Riyadh: DAZN brings the boxing glamour to new production levels for Be...
04/12/2025
Analysis: Paramount bets on the battering ram' with Champions League play By Callum McCarthy, Editor-at-Large
Tuesday, December 2, 2025 - 10:12
Print ...
04/12/2025
Space City Home Network Launches SCHN DTC App for Astros and RocketsThe Rockets and Astros were previously the lone NBA and MLB teams without a DTC appBy Jason...
04/12/2025
SVG Summit 2025 Preview: Content Workflows Workshop Spotlights Evolution of Spor...
04/12/2025
New Sponsor Spotlight: Geotech's Patrick Wambold On the Unreal Engine Revolu...
04/12/2025
Curt Gowdy Jr. - Master Storyteller, Nationally and RegionallyBy Jason Dachman, Editorial Director, U.S.
Thursday, December 4, 2025 - 1:52 pm
Print This Sto...
04/12/2025
(L-R) Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Mohammadreza Eyni, Sara Khaki, and Judith Helfand att...
04/12/2025
SBS launches Future Frames initiative to support emerging First Nations video ed...
04/12/2025
Coronal mass ejections caused by eruptions on the surface of the sun can have fa...
04/12/2025
Gracenote Content Connect enables media ecosystem to precisely align ad campaigns and programming based on rich content signals
NEW YORK - December 4, 2025 - N...
Of the 8.3 billion tons of virgin plastic waste created each year, despite decades of efforts to reduce the amount that ends up in landfills, only about 9 percent gets recycled.
