Data-driven insights enhance recycling operations at Recology

Recology has installed artificial intelligence (AI) robotic sorters from San Francisco-based Glacier at its King County material recovery facility (MRF) in Seattle to improve the quality of the materials the MRF is recovering for recycling and to address material loss.

“The system incorporates four robots and four vision systems, with another two robots and two vision systems to be installed in the coming months,” Glacier CEO Rebecca Hu-Thrams says. “Glacier's technology is being applied to a variety of valuable use cases throughout the MRF, including HDPE [high-density polyethylene] natural and HDPE color picking, residue line recovery and fiber QC.

“This deployment represents Glacier's first holistic integration of our AI vision systems and robotic solutions throughout an MRF. We worked with Recology's team to fit our technology within their existing infrastructure, showing how our technology can easily and cost-effectively plug into what's already there. Together with Recology's team, we analyzed how materials move through the facility and figured out the best spots for our sorting robots and AI vision systems. This approach gives Recology useful, easily actionable operational insights while also improving how much material they can recover.”

Recology’s King County MRF also features two optical sorters targeting various types of plastics; a glass cleanup system from Nihot, a division of Bulk Handling Systems (BHS), Eugene, Oregon, to segregate glass cullet; multiple screens to segregate various types of fiber, including old corrugated containers (OCC); an eddy current to isolate aluminum; and various magnet systems to collect ferrous metals, such as tin cans.

“Our sort line system processes approximately 30 to 40 tons per hour of recyclables,” Recology King County General Manager Anthony Brocato says, noting that processing speed varies by time of year, which affects the moisture in the material stream.

“Having witnessed the success of Glacier’s technology in San Francisco, we’re thrilled to introduce it here in Seattle,” says Salvatore M. Coniglio, CEO of Recology, which is headquartered in San Francisco. “What excites me most is how Glacier’s robots are not only enhancing our recycling efficiency and cutting down on contamination but also providing our team with a safer work environment. This partnership helps us ensure that more valuable materials are recovered, reducing waste and supporting a more sustainable future for everyone.”

Glacier says its system uses advanced computer vision and smart robotic arms to identify and sort 30-plus materials, ranging from polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic and aluminum cans to specific packaging types like toothpaste tubes, cat food tins and more. The robots can sort 45 items per minute, helping MRFs to improve recovery and purity rates. Additionally, Glacier says its systems cost half as much as conventional options, are space-efficient (requiring just 3 feet of conveyor space) and often can be installed in less than one day without facility downtime.

Data insights

The real-time data Glacier’s robots collect also provide MRF operators insights into recycling trends, helping facilities optimize material recovery and align operations with commodity pricing, according to the company.

“Glacier's data can help MRFs understand the number and composition of valuable materials on their residue line, as well as trends throughout the day or week,” Hu-Thrams says. “Our MRF customers use this operating data to quickly identify malfunctioning or degraded upstream sortation for specific commodities, while our ability to quantify the financial value of lost materials also provides insights into the payback period of an upstream equipment upgrade. For example, Glacier's AI scanner identified for one of our MRF customers that they were losing 380 tons of recyclables each year on their residue line, and specifically that 65 percent of their leakage was coming from PET bottles. Based on this data, the MRF added a PET sorter upstream, which led to a 70 percent reduction in residue PET and $138,000 in additional annual revenue for the MRF.”

Glacier says its robots have been deployed in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Phoenix.

“King County is an example of what the MRF of the future looks like—a recycling center doing things right by embracing technology to improve efficiency and sustainability,” Hu-Thrams says. “Recycling is a critical part of sustainability. With our AI robots and vision system, we can recover more materials and create a system where fewer resources are wasted.”

Recology and Glacier say they will continue to monitor the system’s performance and explore further applications of AI and automation to enhance material recovery efforts.

Partnering with CPGs

In addition to working with MRFs, Glacier has partnered with Amazon and Colgate-Palmolive on packaging recyclability.

“Colgate leveraged our AI technology to identify and sort recyclable toothpaste tubes in real-time at MRFs,” Hu-Thrams says. “This helped track recycling rates after Colgate's transition to recyclable HDPE tubes in 2022, providing data to answer strategic circularity questions and measure recycling campaign effectiveness. The initiative supports Colgate's goal of reducing landfill waste from its 9 billion annual toothpaste tubes.

“With Amazon, we focused on tracking flexible bioplastic packaging in the recycling stream. We installed an AI camera on an MRF paper line and developed an AI model capable of identifying bioplastics with 90 percent accuracy. This revealed the importance of packaging design elements like size and graphics in detection, helping Amazon make informed decisions to improve packaging recyclability and recovery.”

Hu-Thrams continues, “With the growing demand for sustainability in the $900 billion global packaging industry, Glacier’s technology can save the CPG [consumer packaged goods] industry billions annually in waste management costs by enabling more recyclable packaging designs.”

“Glacier's innovative use of AI and robotics, coupled with their collaborative approach to local partnerships, has positioned them to scale quickly,” says Mitch Rubin, senior director of innovation at Elemental Impact, which has an office in San Francisco and recently participated in a $16 million funding round to help Glacier scale its AI robots for the recycling industry. “Elemental is thrilled to provide our project expertise and invest in Glacier’s first end-to-end system installation in Washington state, in collaboration with Recology, to deliver more efficient, cost-effective and sustainable recycling.”

Most recent funding round

Glacier’s most recent funding round was led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund (EIF), which says it looks for the most critical pain points where a business problem overlaps with a sustainability problem. The round included continued participation from New Enterprise Associates, Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, AlleyCorp, Overture Climate VC and VSC Ventures. New investors include Elysium, Overlap Holdings, Cox Exponential, Alumni Ventures, One Small Planet and Working Capital Fund.

The investment will accelerate Glacier’s nationwide deployment of AI recycling robots, expansion of its team and innovation in product development. As demand for AI-driven waste solutions grows, Glacier says it remains committed to delivering practical, cost-effective automation to more recycling facilities across the U.S.

“With nearly 80 percent of residential recyclables not recycled, the U.S. is simultaneously depleting natural resources, increasing carbon emissions and failing to meet growing industry demand for recycled materials,” says Sasha Brown, partner at EIF, which is based in San Francisco.

“We urgently need innovative solutions to process and recover valuable, recycled resources more efficiently. Glacier's purpose-built AI solves critical challenges in the recycling industry with a practical, affordable approach. The company’s ability to deploy quickly—without disrupting existing operations—combined with its impressive growth trajectory, makes Glacier precisely the kind of technology and team we're proud to support.”

“There’s tremendous potential for advancements in AI to bring clarity to our recycling supply chain,” says Areeb Malik, chief technology officer and co-founder of Glacier. “We’ve seen data transform entire industries—and now, it’s the circular economy’s turn.”

“This milestone funding round comes at a pivotal moment in our journey,” Hu-Thrams says. “After a year of rapid growth and successful deployments across major markets, we're now positioned to scale our technology even faster. With partners like Recology embracing our solution and a strong investor coalition behind us, Glacier has the opportunity to meaningfully strengthen U.S. recycling infrastructure and on-shore critical manufacturing capabilities, create more skilled jobs and develop a specialized workforce trained in advanced material recovery. Our goal is to not only help address crucial environmental challenges but also build our nation’s economic resilience in a resource-constrained global market.”