Recycling is important but it’s also a pain. Separating glass from plastic from paper isn’t a terrible task but what wouldn’t it be nicer if a robot did it instead? That’s why one inventor built the Lasso, a robot that claims to accept, indentify, and prepare recycling for proper reuse.
Creator Aldous Hicks built the lasso to automatically recycle things like glass and plastic. You drop an item into the machine, the machine analyses it, and then if it’s recyclable it grinds it up and prepares it for disposal.
Hicks, a mechanical engineer and programmer, saw recycling as a “materials corruption problem.”
“He believes that when you mix up different items all together at the beginning – whether it is data or used-materials – they are difficult to separate later,” said Lasso representative Kieran White. “Everything then ends up being wasted. Within a month he wrote down his first ‘used-materials in/valuable products out’ solution for his home recycling system. He has since spent part of his life working to fix this vital problem.”
The company has raised capital to build the products and will ship in September 2022. It’s launching its pickup service in the San Francisco Bay Area between San Mateo and San Jose first and will then expand out into the United States. However, don’t get too excited about it finding a place next to your trashcan right away. It should cost about $3,500 when it finally ships.
The company sees its system for pre-sorting as a way to ensure high-quality materials re-enter the recycling chain and it will work to pick up material in the machine whenever the device gets full. Because all the sorting is done properly at home, recycling centers shouldn’t have to spend money on workers to separate various materials. The Lasso should clean all of the materials as well, ensuring it’s ready to recycle.
If it works as intended it will be a nice little solution for recycling. But for now, just get used to crushing your fans and rinsing out the glassware you’re aiming to toss.