AMP: AI-Powered Sortation for Waste and Recycling

“With AMP’s technology, we can pick additional material we weren’t before because of the faster speeds and the ability of AMP’s AI to identify different materials in the stream.”

“As a MRF operator, this is one of the best investments you can make. There’s not another piece of equipment we could’ve purchased with the same impact. If I were starting a new facility, I wouldn’t do it without AI and robotics.”

“Our bottom line has improved drastically. It’s been an improvement in efficiency and you see a complete difference in the grade of the material, which helps you understand the function of the robots versus not having them.”

“As both a leading global packaging provider and a recycler, Sonoco is uniquely positioned to help develop and deliver end-of-life solutions across our consumer and industrial packaging platforms. This partnership represents another step forward in our efforts to improve end-of-life options for our sustainable packaging solutions.”

“We’re in the outreach and education business. Robots help us efficiently divert more material. We, and the community we serve, want to see things done safely, more sustainably, and with less of a carbon footprint—and with this technology, we are,”

“We accept polypropylene in our bins, so we should be recovering it—both from an environmental and an economic standpoint.”

“The robot met our expectations almost immediately and showed constant improvement”

“Grant funding is important because it shows a real commitment from the industry to partnering with the community on recycling programs. It’s particularly helpful in jump-starting a program for materials that might not have traditionally been sorted as their own stream because the funding covers the cost of some of the infrastructure and start-up—removing a significant barrier to entry for a MRF.”

“We’ve been very pleased with our partnership with AMP, and plan on continuing to work together as we identify future needs for AI-powered sorting.”

“The net result is we’re getting more PET bottle picks—about twice as many—from the material stream. We want to recover all we can, and with AMP’s technology, we are.”

“AMP’s team has been extremely responsive, available anytime we requested support. The team has gone out of its way to follow up and check in without being prompted.”

“It’s all part of our recycling promise to the community: if you recycle properly, it’s going to come through our system and be sorted efficiently and wind back up in the products you rely on. We listen to consumers about what they want to recycle beyond #1 and #2 plastic bottles, like cartons and yogurt cups, and identify buyers and end markets for these recycled commodities.”

“Bringing people into our facility to see the robots is a huge opportunity. We consider ourselves an incubator and leader in public sector advancements, so we jump at any chance to share AMP’s technology with plastics recyclers in our region, like Petoskey Plastics or East Jordan Plastics. If we—a small, dual-stream facility in northern Michigan—can leverage public and private sector investment to benefit from cutting-edge technology, others can as well.”

“It’s amazing how well and efficiently the surge hopper works. The more we run it, the less time we’re actually spending with it. It fills up, our people walk away, and we let the robots do the work. Whether it be minutes or seconds, we empty it sooner every week. There are more picks per minute, and it seems like it’s only getting faster.”

“We would not have gotten through the last year without robots. We didn’t have to rely on any temporary workers during COVID, and we’ve become more confident in the staffing we need with the help of automation,”

“We knew AMP was the leader in the robot world, and we found robots to be more cost-effective than optical sorters,”

“We consider ourselves an incubator and leader in public sector advancements, so we jump at any chance to share AMP’s technology with plastics recyclers in our region.”

“If we compare this facility to older plants with manual work, the difference is clear,”

“It’s clear that the more automated facilities are, the better the yields and quality of the final product,”

“We tested the robot prior to implementation and were pleased with its ability to recognize and recover materials that optical sorters cannot. It’s been fast and effective, and a great tool for quality control.”

“AMP is the leading brand in robotics, and that was an important factor for us in choosing a solution to improve our sorting productivity and efficiency.”

“What I get most excited about over the long term is by making recycling this fundamentally better business, you not only create an incentive to expand it in the U.S. or Europe, but in the developing world, and you can really make a huge impact.”

“The technology is only going to get better, and it’s pretty great as it is right now. I know there are partnerships and hybrids of different types of technologies coming out, and I’m looking forward to seeing what the industry brings and what else we can implement within our facility that can help us increase diversion and decrease landfilling.”

“The robot is functioning very well, and it's keeping the material out of the landfill. Polypropylene is now a marketable product for us,”

“The AMP team came out, and we had [the robots] in within three days. The time frame, AMP’s flexibility to come out on a weekend, and complete an install so it didn’t impact our production—I love working with AMP.”