Entering Recology’s recycling facility in South Seattle stuns your senses. The din from heavy machinery is continuous. While recycled goods are meant to be clean from food waste, your nose quickly knows that’s not happening. Crisscrossing the massive space is a highway of conveyor belts snaking in and out of devices that grind, toss and sort the plastic from paper from glass from cans.
Standing over the conveyor belts are dozens of workers scanning and sorting the items into their correct categories so they can become feed stock for new goods and packaging.
The work is physically hard and mentally exhausting — but not if you’re a robot endowed with artificial intelligence.
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