GARBAGE IS A GLOBAL problem that each of us contributes to. Since the 1970s, we’ve all been told we can help fix that problem by assiduously recycling bottles and cans, boxes and newspapers.
So far, though, we haven’t been up to the task. Only 16 percent of the 2.1 billion tonnes of solid waste that the world produces every year gets recycled. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the United States recycled only about 32 percent of its garbage in 2018, putting the country in the middle of the pack worldwide. Germany, on the high end, captures about 65 percent, while Chile and Turkey barely do anything, recycling a mere 1 percent of their trash, according to a 2015 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Here in the United States, of the 32 percent of the trash that we try to recycle, about 80 to 95 percent actually gets recycled, as Jason Calaiaro of AMP Robotics points out in “AI Takes a Dumpster Dive.” The technology that Calaiaro’s company is developing could move us closer to 100 percent. But it would have no effect on the two-thirds of the waste stream that never makes it to recyclers.