The Future of Recycling | Podcast Ep. 62 Donβt Be A Waster
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Hello, and welcome to another edition of Recycle: Don’t Be a Waster.
I’m sure, like all of you, we’ve been spending a lot of time using this new artificial intelligence, this new amazingβI’m not even sure what it isβbut technology that seems to have arrived from nowhere.
Sometimes I’m amazed that even like two years ago, I’d barely heard of it. And if I had heard of it, I dismissed it pretty much.
In today’s episode, I think we’re going to look… I’m going to take out my crystal ball and wear my soothsaying hat and look into the future and try to predict what the Australian waste industry will look like in, say, 15, 20 years.
And fundamentally, I supposeβplot spoiler, plot alertβI think it’s just gonna be we’re gonna be dumber. We will let machines and technology do a lot of the thinking and the work, and we will become lazier and less useful, which I think is happening in pretty much all fields of human endeavor, some people might argue.
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More and More Bins on Our Streets
So if we just look at the world today, look at 2026, and I even saw on the newspapers today the Victorian opposition party is talking about bringing back weekly red bins for residents because every fortnight it’s not enough.
And we’re seeing more and more bins. Basically, our streets and our streetscapes are becoming chock-a-block with red bins, yellow bins, blue bins, and then now FOGO bins for organics.
And we’re forcing businesses in Sydney to do organic waste recycling. Just more and more bins.
And fundamentally, what we’re doing is we’re sort of, I guess, we’re outsourcing the separation to millions and millions of people to separate stuff, which involves training, branding, coloring, providing receptacles.
And so every household, every business tries to separate cardboard, paper, food waste, grass, etc., etc.
And really, you know, is that going to continue? Is that the way the future will be?
And I suppose I think I propose in this episode that in the future we will have simply one bin.
Will We Eventually Have Just One Bin?
One bin. We’ll chuck everything in that bin and that will be it.
And it’ll be separated somewhere else by wonderful, wonderful new machines and technologies.
So basically, let’s think through how this will work so it doesn’t just sound like pie in the sky.
Fundamentally, I think we’ll have one bin at your house or business.
Look, we’ll always have waste with lots of stuff we don’t need. We’ll chuck it in that one bin. It will be a mixture of everything.
And then it will go in one truck and it will be brought to, I suppose, a facility. There could be different types of facilities, but there will be an extrapolation of what we have now of the MRFs, the Material Recovery Facilities that we have now, which separate waste with quite mechanical and almost Wallace and Gromit old-fashioned-style separation methods.
But if we apply AI, new technology, I think I read recently that we haven’t advanced in many engineering or scientific sectors very much in the last 50 years.
Nearly every technology we have, it pretty much existed in one form or another before the Second World War.
We had flight, we had cars.
Applying New Technology to Existing Waste Systems
This will show how uneducated I am, but I don’t know when the antibiotics were launched and transformed the world.
So a lot of science has been around for quite a while, except we’ve made leaps and bounds in the world of electronics, which has led to microchips, it’s led to computers, it’s led to AI, the websites, all that sort of stuff, and the device that you’re listening to this wonderful podcast on as well.
So I think what will happen is we will apply this technology to an existingβwe’ll apply this new electronic technology to an existing system, which is the waste collection, sorting and disposal and recycling systems.
So MRFs will becomeβMaterial Recovery Facilities will become infinitely better.
We’ll apply, a bit like at your local supermarket where the machinery can spot if you’ve got bananas or apples or whatever else.
These machines will be able to spot, over time, get better and better at saying what type of waste it is. Is it recyclable? Which it should go into, and automatically, without human interaction, separate them out.
AI Could Make Waste Sorting More Efficient
That will massively improve the efficiency and lower the costs and make it quicker, and 24 hours a day you can separate this waste in a proper facility.
So the machines will drive it in, and who knows, maybe they’re driverless trucks, and they will drive into this facility. It will process and separate the materials based on all these different methodologies and put them into the right sorting trays.
And there’s many ways we could do this, whether barcodes, a very simple method, more likely simply recognition, shapes, formats, weights.
Machines will know what the material is and will know where to go.
So it’ll be as simple as separating PET bottles, aluminium cans, coffee cups, milk cartons, black plastic trays, all that sort of stuff, or the whole way to electronic devices.
And theoretically work out the bestβthe best methodology, the best destination for these materials.
There’s a lot of stuff we could do to help this happen. We could do better labeling and color coding of what goes in.
Obviously, there’ll be a lot of other moving parts in the process between here and then, such as, like, I expect plastic to be pretty much banned for single-use stuff.
Single-Use Plastics and the Future of Robotics
I read that in the European Union they were banning single-use containers for things such as ketchups, sauces, soy sauces, that aspect that you get in restaurants. That’s been phased out and banned throughout the European Union, and I think it’s however many countries it is now, 20-something countries.
So that will happen, and robots will eventuallyβyou know, they’re already getting better and better at things.
And one area they probably have lagged a bit is in, you know, hand dexterity, whereby they’re not able to do things with their hands that people can, such as separating things out.
But I’ve seen videos whereby people are basically wearing headsets and doing very hand-detailed hand movements, such as stitching, such as playing cards, et cetera, and training AI models to do that.
So the robotics will almost certainly, in 20 years, be able to do this, separate things out, remove dangerous and hazardous work on the existing conveyor belts at these recycling facilities.
People that wear very protective gloves to protect themselves against broken glass, rusty metals, needles, et cetera, that can be there.
So I expect fully that this will do this.
The machines will do the whole thing.
Where Does This Leave Humans?
And where does this leave humans?
It fundamentally leaves us as it reduces our role to a large extent.
We can throw everything out together with the confidence that it will end up in the right place.
Our efforts, our education campaigns, likely will become obsolete, and likely we won’t be needed to, you know, learn about this stuff.
And we’ll be looked after by these wonderful, caringβhopefully, hopefully caringβmachines that will do the separating, the work, all that stuff for us.
Our streets will have one bin. It will save us time.
Who knows? Will we even put the bins out, or will the machine drag the bins to the pavement?
I’m sure there’ll be a lot of more changes between here and then.
But that’s what I expect.
I think it will boost our recycling performance.
Clearly, we contaminate a lot of bins currently through human error by throwing waste into recyclables. That ends up getting dumped in landfill.
So realistically, what goes to landfill will reduce significantly, potentially almost 100% in the next 20 years.
Building a Better Circular Economy
So that’s fundamentally what I expect.
We’ll extract the value of the materials that we have and build a better, more circular economy.
Recycling itselfβwe’ll probably cover this in a future episodeβobviously recycling takes a lot of energy currently, but with renewables, improved electronics and improved renewable systems, that will become cheaper and more doable.
So look, I think it’s a virtuous circle and a virtuous recycling circle, and I think good things will happen.
So, yeah, let’s leave it there today.
Let’s bring on the time we’ve got one bin and don’t have to stand in the dark at night, the day before bin collection, separating our plastic bottles covered in tea leaves and yogurt pots and all that sort of stuff.
So I’m sure that’s something none of us will miss.
But in a weird way, maybe, you know, for the people who do like recycling and all that stuff, you know, maybe we will miss some parts of it.
But, yeah, maybe that’s just me.
So remember: Recycle, don’t be a Waster.
