This startup aims to improve recycling by capturing 'chemical fingerprints' with high

by Lisa Stiffler on April 25, 2023 at 8:47 amApril 25, 2023 at 8:47 am

Sustainability: News covering the rapidly growing climate tech sector, funding in the space and other areas of innovation to protect our planet. SEE MORE

If you’re someone who recycles, you’ve experienced that paralyzed moment in front of a row of waste bins not knowing where your plastic fork and cup are meant to go.

Now imagine you had to accurately sort your plastic trash as it whizzed by on a conveyor belt at the rate of 3 feet per second.

British Columbia's Metaspectral is up for that challenge.

The startup has created technology using hyperspectral cameras and artificial intelligence (AI) to rapidly identify and sort plastics for recycling. While distinguishing between many plastics is essentially impossible with a regular camera that sees only red, blue and green, a hyperspectral camera can capture up to 300 frequencies of light.

"Each one of those 300 bounces back differently," said Francis Doumet, Metaspectral CEO and co-founder. "It allows us to make up a chemical fingerprint off the material we’re looking at."

The Vancouver-based startup recently received a $419,000 grant from a government initiative to curb plastic waste. It previously landed $300,000 from the same source, called the CleanBC Plastics Action Fund.

Metaspectral also closed a $4.7 million seed round in November.

The company's technology currently is being used by one of B.C.'s main recyclers to sort between polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic used to make items like water bottles and high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic used for goods such as milk bottles and food containers. Its system can also distinguish between purer, high-quality PET items and PET that's mixed with other materials, making it lower quality.

The new grant will support research to differentiate between homopolymer HDPE that's typically found in milk jugs and copolymer HDPE often used for detergent, shampoo and automotive oil containers.

Governments and organizations around the world are scrambling to address what is being called a plastic waste crisis. In the U.S., about 5% of plastic waste is recycled. Most of the rest winds up in landfills or littering the environment. About 12 million metric tons of plastic goes into the ocean each year, according to Greenpeace.

To help address this, B.C. last year began adding a 10-cent per bottle deposit to the sale of milk containers, which is refunded when the container is returned to a participating location. Washington state lawmakers are considering a new rule to levy a bottle deposit fee, but it excludes milk jugs.

Beginning this year, companies in Washington are required to use at least 15% recycled content in beverage bottles — except for milk and certain wine containers, which have until 2028 to comply. Canada is also pursuing rules that would require plastic packaging to include 50% recycled materials by 2030.

In a typical recycling system, items are picked up by a waste disposal provider and the recyclable items are bundled into bales that go to a recycling plant. At the recycler, the plastic items are sorted by type. The plastic is turned into pellets or flakes that become a stock material for products that contain recycled plastics.

RELATED: How do you recycle plastic? Startups and scientists are trying to make it easier

But mixed plastics are worth less and harder for producers to reuse. Metaspectral wants to help solve that problem.

"We’re able to increase the quality of the recycled material, which then increases the appeal of the recycled material to manufacturers of containers, and that contributes to the circular economy," Doumet said. "The material is recycled over and over."

Metaspectral is applying its imaging technology to two areas: climate and national security. In addition to plastics recycling, the startup is developing tools for visualizing the amount of carbon captured by agriculture, which could help farmers earn money for carbon offsets. It's also interested in exploring battery recycling and the recovery of precious metals from the process.

On the security front, it works with government departments in distinguishing between objects at a distance, such as telling the difference between a ship on the horizon and organic material like driftwood.

The company launched in 2018 and has 11 employees.

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