Case Study 2: Reclaiming the “unsortable”

Written by Georgia Crowther, Founder and CEO

Plastic E-Waste - A High Value Sorting Challenge

According to the World Health Organization, we discard 62 million tons of e-waste every year, with approximately 25% of that volume consisting of plastics like ABS, PC, and HIPS. 

These plastics from e-waste pose a particular sorting challenge for recyclers. E-plastics are generally black or highly pigmented, causing them to resist traditional optical sorting techniques such as x-ray fluorescence and near IR spectroscopy. The Basel Convention Ban amendment also limits the movement of mixed e-plastics across borders, making previously common methods of disposal untenable for electronics material processors.

But recycling these plastics also presents new opportunities. Reclaiming just the 1.4 million tons of e-waste discarded in the US every year would also reclaim $2.5 billion worth of valuable plastic resins and save many millions of dollars in land-filling fees. Reclamation Factory’s Acoustic AI can help make e-waste sorting effective and low cost, and does not suffer from the limitations of hyperspectral sorting with black plastics. 

Acoustic Sorting Results 

Reclamation Factory used 25 lbs of shredded, sink-float separated ABS, PC, HIPS, and PC-ABS from display screens to train our Acoustic AI model. Nearly all plastic shred was black or highly pigmented. These resins represent the majority of black e-waste plastics used across the industry. 

Our final e-waste Acoustic AI sorting model archives an average of over 96% precision across these four mixed, shredded e-waste resins. These results are particularly important for ABS and PC, which are high-value and high-demand resins. 

This model achieves these precisions for highly pigmented plastics and for arbitrarily shaped shreds ranging in size from 1” to 4” in major diameter.

Right now, sorting for black e-waste plastics is performed using costly x-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, by hand, or not at all. Acoustic AI offers one of the first cost-effective automation solutions for black e-waste plastic sorting at most scales.  

Join an E-Waste Sorting Pilot Program Today

For recyclers, manufacturers and secondary-material partners that struggle with waste sorting, we invite you to join a pilot study to test our process on your waste stream. Contact our team to explore how acoustic sensing can leverage the full value of your waste stream.