
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
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
02/05/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
01/05/2026
January 5 2026, 18:30 (PST) NBCUniversal's Peacock to Be First Streamer to ...
30/04/2026
The Professional Women's Hockey League (PWHL) concluded its third regular season on Saturday, reporting growth across attendance, viewership, digital engage...
30/04/2026
NBC Sports will air national MLB coverage on Sundays beginning May 3, with MLB Sunday Leadoff on Peacock and NBCSN at 12:30 p.m. ET, followed by the debut of th...
30/04/2026
Clear-Com has appointed Brian Grahn as Market Outreach Manager of the Americas and Ben Turnwell as Business Development Manager for EMEA live.
Grahn joined Cle...
30/04/2026
ARRI has introduced the cforce MAX, a new lens motor for the Hi-5 lens control system. The cforce MAX is twice as fast as the cforce plus motor it replaces whil...
30/04/2026
Knuerr, Voxtronic, and IHSE will jointly present an integrated control room solu...
30/04/2026
The CW Network and ESPN have announced an agreement to make the ESPN App the exclusive streaming home for all CW Sports live events. CW Sports will continue to ...
30/04/2026
Ed Sheeran's The Loop' tour launched in Auckland in January 2026 before moving on to Australia, with South America and the United States to follow late...
30/04/2026
Audinate has announced Dante Preset Creator, a free online tool for configuring Dante network settings before hardware is available on site. Presets created in ...
30/04/2026
Yahoo Sports has announced the appointment of Jarrod Schwarz as General Manager of Yahoo Sports. Schwarz will oversee product, design, and technology; revenue a...
30/04/2026
Nielsen has released a new report, Get Ready with Media Intelligence: 2026 FIFA World Cup Edition, examining U.S. soccer viewership trends, fan engagement, and ...
30/04/2026
USA Lacrosse and SportsEngine have announced an expanded partnership, naming Spo...
30/04/2026
Telos Alliance will participate in the 2026 Media Production and Technology Show (MPTS), taking place May 13-14 at Olympia London. Rather than exhibiting from a...
30/04/2026
The global streamer buys the U.S. DTC platform solutions provider for a reported...
30/04/2026
Tigo Sports, Paraguay's leading sports broadcaster, has upgraded its video infrastructure with Ateme solutions for live encoding, multiplexing, and signal c...
30/04/2026
World Rugby and IMG have announced a long-term media rights partnership focused on growing rugby in the United States ahead of the Men's and Women's Rug...
30/04/2026
For the second year in a row, Overtime and the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) are teaming up through a renewed content partnership to bring fans even...
30/04/2026
The 22-year ESPN vet's responsibilities will reportedly be taken over by SVP Mike Foss...
30/04/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
30/04/2026
Amazon and Duke University have announced a multiyear agreement for Prime Video to present exclusive coverage of three Duke Blue Devils men's basketball neu...
30/04/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent rating news and is derived from press rel...
30/04/2026
Music is evolving, and so are the ways you discover and connect with artists. In...
30/04/2026
Between April 22-29, the first inaugural Stockholm Music Week brought together thought leaders and partners across industries including music, tech, government,...
30/04/2026
Iconic large-format console upgraded
API's iconic Vision console has just been treated to an overhaul that aims to meet the demands of today's profe...
30/04/2026
Comes complete with miking accessories
The LCT 440 Pure has proven to be a popular member of Lewitt's mic line-up, offering impressive technical perform...
30/04/2026
24 October 2026 at The Octagon, Sheffield
Now in its eighth year, SynthFest UK is the largest event of its kind in the UK, bringing together the top keyboar...
30/04/2026
SBS & NITV LEAD NATIONAL RECONCILIATION WEEK 2026 WITH LANDMARK GULPILIL DOCUMEN...
30/04/2026
Rohde & Schwarz equips new Terminal 3 at Frankfurt Airport with security scanner...
30/04/2026
Rohde & Schwarz expands broadband amplifier portfolio with new power classes up ...
30/04/2026
Jennifer Ehle (Contagion, Zero Dark Thirty) and Alex Hassell (Rivals, Wasteman, ...
30/04/2026
MELBOURNE, Fla., April 29, 2026 - L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) today announ...
30/04/2026
MELBOURNE, Fla., April 30, 2026 - L3Harris Technologies (NYSE: LHX) reports first quarter 2026 results.
Highlights
Orders of $7.8 billion; book-to-bill of 1....
30/04/2026
Behind the Broadcast: The Sound of Elite Golf Golf is gaining popularity; the 2025 Ryder Cup achieved record-breaking viewing figures in the UK specifically, wi...
30/04/2026
STA VENERA, MALTA, APRIL 29, 2026 CPI Media, a voluntary organization within the Missionary Society of St Paul (MSSP) and a leading media house dedicated to p...
30/04/2026
New software platform delivers comprehensive timing measurement across production workflows...
30/04/2026
Once again, the UK Pavilion in Hall 5 of BroadcastAsia 2026 will feature the latest and best in technology specifically developed and tailored for modern media ...
30/04/2026
Avid powers faster workflows and next-generation immersive audio with latest Pro...
30/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/04/2026
Scalable broadcast-grade production over public internet, replacing traditional OB workflows...
30/04/2026
Live demonstrations highlight LCEVC ecosystem momentum, AI-powered video pipelines, and expansion across broadcast, streaming, and social media.
DTV (TV 3.0) ...
30/04/2026
Student Spotlight: Matthew Leon The dual major shares his path from community college to Berklee, and how his heritage influences his work.
April 29, 2026
B...
30/04/2026
Berklee Artists to Perform at Major Global Music Festivals As part of the Berklee Popular Music Institute, students will perform at Lollapalooza, Governors Ba...
30/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/04/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...