Rebecca Hu-Thrams, co-founder and CEO of Glacier, explains how AI-powered robots are transforming recycling facilities to build a $2 trillion circular economy. Her company's sorters process waste for one in 10 Americans, using advanced computer vision to sort materials efficiently. This technology addresses longstanding issues in material recovery facilities, where much of the recycling stream is lost.
Rebecca Hu-Thrams, a first-generation American who grew up reusing household items like margarine tubs, founded Glacier to tackle inefficiencies in the U.S. recycling system. In a recent podcast, she highlighted that up to 80% of materials placed in blue bins by Americans end up in landfills, largely due to outdated technology at material recovery facilities (MRFs). These facilities face a severe labor shortage, often refilling sorting positions five times a year, with injury rates double those in construction work.
Glacier's solution involves deploying AI-powered robotic sorters across MRFs. Trained on over 3 billion images of waste, these robots use computer vision to identify and sort more than 70 different materials. Operating 24/7, they pick 45 items per minute in harsh conditions unsuitable for humans. Hu-Thrams described recycling as "the most demented form of manufacturing on the planet" and emphasized the need for cutting-edge technology to capture the raw materials flowing through these facilities.
A practical example comes from a Detroit MRF, where an AI camera on a residue line uncovered significant losses of PET bottles to landfills. Installing a single sorter based on this insight reduced PET waste to landfills by two-thirds and generated an additional $138,000 in annual revenue.
Beyond sorting, Glacier's robots create a data layer for the circular economy, tracking waste down to specific brands and packaging designs. Amazon, an investor through its Climate Pledge fund, leverages this data to refine packaging for better recyclability, shifting from "technically recyclable" to "provably recyclable." With extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws expanding in the U.S., Hu-Thrams noted that such measures have boosted recycling rates by over 40 percentage points in parts of Europe.
Glacier envisions recycling evolving into advanced manufacturing, supported by reliable data, consistent automation, and high-quality feedstock. "MRF managers show up to work, turn on the lights, and hold their breath and wait to see what new, crazy things come down their conveyor lines," Hu-Thrams said. She hopes future producers will design items "really easy to recycle," closing the gap to a true circular economy faster than past decades suggest.