For everyone Promised, the current state of solid waste recycling leaves much to be desired. Plastic waste is one of the worst: it represents 12% of solid waste in the US, but only 4.5% of it is recycled.
There are many reasons why we fear recycling plastics. For one, not all of them are easily recyclable. The plastics industry has not done us any favors either.
But what can be easily solved is the sorting problem. There isn’t just one type of plastic – there are many, and sorting them into different categories can go a long way to making recycling more profitable and practical.
Metaspectral thinks it’s found a way to simplify the detection problem and raised $4.7 million in seed funding to launch and expand its data analytics platform, TechCrunch has learned exclusively. Investors in the round include SOMA Capital, Acequia Capital, the Government of Canada and angel investors Jude Gomila and Alan Rutledge.
They’re not the first to try to sort plastics, but they’re taking a different step than most by using hyperspectral imaging to identify which plastic is which in real time.
