(Radio Iowa) – An eastern Iowa recycling operation is investing five-million dollars in three more trash-sorting robots, after earlier successes with artificial intelligence. Since 2019, the Scott Area Recycling Center in Davenport has used an optical sorter to identify materials along a conveyor belt and sort them automatically with high-powered jets of air. Facility supervisor Mike Keppy says the optical sorter has increased the quality of their recycled product as well the value they can receive from selling it in the second-hand market.

The facility processes 40-thousand tons a year, with hopes the new machines will increase that tonnage while decreasing the material that’s sent to the landfill. The new machines will go online next summer.