A new pilot program is using Artificial Intelligence to try to improve recycling.
Bloomberg reports a couple of cities, one in Michigan and one in Canada, have equipped their recycling trucks with cameras and AI-powered computers — they’re able to identify items in recycling bins that are not actually recyclable. If they find something, the resident gets a postcard in the mail showing them the item that shouldn’t have been in the bin.
Advocates say steps like this can help people make sure they’re only throwing recyclables in their blue bins; critics, though, worry about privacy, among other concerns.
Michael Mehaffy, a faculty associate at ASU, teaches a class called sustainable urbanism. He’s also a researcher in sustainability at Notre Dame. Mehaffy joined The Show to discuss.
Full conversation
MARK BRODIE: First off, what do you make of this pilot project?
MICHAEL MEHAFFY: So I think this is a really interesting frontier. You know, everybody's talking about AI of course, and I think what this particular project shows us is how we might be able to use AI more effectively. You know, this is early days, of course, but use AI more effectively to help us make good decisions about how we use energy, how we use resources, how we get around, how we, you know, use the city in a more livable way.
BRODIE: It seems like this is one of the big challenges in recycling, which is people putting the wrong things in the blue bins, maybe inadvertently, maybe they think this kind of plastic or this kind of cardboard can be recycled in a particular city and it can't be. Is this the kind of thing that you think will make an appreciable difference and lead people to only put recyclables in the recycling bin?
MEHAFFY: I mean, it could be, the jury is out. We need to wait and see. But, you know, one of the problems with recycling is just what you say, that people don't necessarily put the right thing in the right bins or sometimes even if they do think that they're recycling, it isn't really gonna get recycled. It goes, you know, it gets shipped overseas somewhere, something like that.
So I think these kinds of tools could be really useful in educating us about how we can make better choices and maybe save some money too in many cases.
BRODIE: I'm curious what you make about the concerns that some people have raised about privacy in terms of, you know, taking photos of what's in your bin and sending you a postcard about it. Like, do you have concerns about privacy with a project like this?
MEHAFFY: Well, obviously with AI and with all you know, computer technology, we've got to be really concerned about privacy and we've got to have those safeguards. You know, the bigger lesson here I think is that with AI and with all of these technologies, we can't just turn it loose, we can't let it just start, you know, doing things to us in our lives.
We need to have the human being controlling the process, controlling the technology. And that means the people who run it, but also means us as consumers.
BRODIE: So in a situation like this with this kind of project, where would you like to see humans being involved?
MEHAFFY: Well, certainly at the level of the people who are administering it again, you can't just expect AI to be an automatic technology that you turn over and let it do its thing. We need to control these technologies. So certainly the people who are operating these kinds of programs need to be in the process all the way curating the results.
In addition, I think there needs to be peer review. There needs to be checks and balances. And you know, agency review, if it's a private entity or if it's a public entity, another entity that's reviewing it. We need to have these checks and and controls on this technology as it's rolling out, especially now in the early days when we don't understand all the different ways that it can be used and can potentially harm us.
BRODIE: So, one of the advantages that proponents of this kind of project are talking about is they're using it in one of the cities is East Lansing Michigan, where of course Michigan State University is, and their argument is among others is that, you know, every year you have new people coming in living here, not really knowing what the rules are, not knowing what's recyclable.
And then after a year, maybe two or three, they leave and you have a new, you know, batch of students coming in. So I wonder if maybe this kind of thing could be more applicable in a place that's kind of transient like that. I'm wondering, you know, you teach at ASU like maybe, maybe this would be good in Tempe but maybe not in another more established type place where people aren't leaving quite as much or even maybe just particular neighborhoods within a city.
MEHAFFY: Well, you know, with any technology, there's the early adopters, right, that are gonna try it out. And I think students are primed for that kind of early adoption process. You know, this is very much going to be an incremental process developing technologies like this. So, absolutely, I think ASU would be a great sort of test bed or laboratory for this kind of project and then maybe it would become more widely available and more useful to, to more people.
BRODIE: How big of a dent do you think something like this could put into the issue of the wrong stuff going into the blue bins, which as we know, can sort of gum up the works at the, you know, transfer stations and, and you know, in some cases, kind of ruin batches of perfectly good recyclable stuff.
MEHAFFY: Well, this is one of the things that, of course, we've got to do when we're improving our systems, like recycling systems and, you know, making them more efficient and so on. This is all part of the broader effort sometimes referred to as smart cities, right, where we're using this kind of technology to identify where the problems are and how to fix those. That's what we're trying to do.
But I think we also have to recognize that it's not just one thing, one effort like recycling, it's a whole series of things that have to work together as a system. You know, there's not a silver bullet like, oh, if we all just recycled, everything would be fine, you know. We've got to do a whole series of things and then all those small things add up to effective change in dealing with our challenges.
BRODIE: Well, and similarly, is it safe to say that within the world of recycling, it's not one thing like this that will make it more efficient and effective. There's got to be other things that go along with it as well.
MEHAFFY: Absolutely. You know, it's other kinds of efficiencies, reusing things in the home, for example, repurposing things, buying things that you don't even need to recycle because they last longer and so on.
Yeah, there's a whole host of things that I think we can become more aware of and I think AI has the capacity to, to lead us to, to show us, you know, as not as a, something that's forcing us into, into anything but that's giving us choices, giving us options and allowing us to see how those can be beneficial to our pocketbooks and to our lives and quality of life, all those things. I think this is really promising actually.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Prairie Robotics, a company based in Canada, has an AI recycling program. In an email, a spokesman said that his company is already following much of the advice Mehaffy offered. He said the company’s project results were reviewed independently by third parties including two universities. The company also said it doesn’t collect any personal information when gathering recyclables and asks cities to review possible contamination.
