A local resident puts plastic bottles in Superbin’s reverse vending machine, Nephron, in a park in Gwacheon, south of Seoul, on March 24, 2019. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Nov. 16 (Korea Bizwire) — Armed with a variety of technologies, an increasing number of startups are making forays into the waste resource collection business.
As environmental, social and governance (ESG) management is emerging as a major trend, the value of waste resource recycling is on the rise.
Tech startup Superbin’s vending machine Nephron takes photos of recyclable wastes using its built-in camera, with its artificial intelligence (AI) program identifying if they can be recycled through a comprehensive analysis of their size, appearance, and recycling symbols printed on their surfaces.
At present, a total of 265 Nephron vending machines are installed across the country.
Currently, the collected wastes are sold to recycled item collectors. However, Superbin plans to build its own chemical textile plant where it can directly reprocess them.
Inobus is a professional collector of one-off plastic cups. The robot it developed can accurately identify and sort out recyclable plastic cups even when they are mixed with food and paper.
Reco collects food wastes generated from various business sites and recycles them as a fertilizer.
It distributes a 5 liter-scale waste collection container to businesses, with its own program providing the information on the amount of food waste emission for each business on a real time basis.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
