After more than 10 years in the polymer industry, entrepreneur and chemical engineer Jordi Berguinzo saw a small percentage of packaging in Europe and proposed a new solution, not only for garbage collection companies to recover more containers, but also to involve citizens more in this process. Recircula Solutions, which carries the Recysmart solution, has revealed that its start-ups can help us achieve a cleaner world of technology and design.

It is a device that can be installed in any type of urban container and is capable of identifying the material of recycled packaging by citizens. To distinguish vessel types, mechanical design has been combined with acoustic-based AI algorithms. Thus, when the package enters a container it generates a special acoustic signal that will capture the sensors and process them in real time.

Europe generates more than 240 million tonnes of urban waste, which is 500 kg of waste per person per year, and only 40% is recycled, according to Eurostat. The rest end up in landfills, incinerators or polluting the planet. Recircula Solutions is convinced that the most successful recycling systems are based on citizen reward systems, but for this the authorities need to know what is being recycled and who is doing it.

"Incentive programs based on direct discounts on mobility, local trade or the fight against food waste are showing very good results as the ship's share rises to 90%," said Jordi Berguinzo. The founder acknowledges, however, that both Spain and Europe are facing a problem: "the inability of governments to motivate citizens to recycle more and better waste at source and in an economically viable way."

Recysmart's neural network can distinguish four types of packaging: glass, plastic, cans and cardboard, with an accuracy of over 95%. “Our mission is to properly recycle 100% of our waste in cities,” says Berguinzo. The startup proposal has already attracted the attention of companies such as Sacyr, Ferrovial or Urbaser, and they are offering technology nationwide with the aim of filling municipal waste bidding specifications in order to comply with European regulations.

The device collects all the data obtained and sends it to the platform so that the waste managers and the public authorities can reward the good recycling actions of the citizens. The technology is available - economically and logistically - for almost any urban waste manager, public entity or private sector that wants to access it easily.

Right now, there are 70 Recysmart-supplied containers, mainly in Spain and Portugal, but also in Italy, the United Kingdom and Austria, although the goal for 2022 is to reach 1,800. On the other hand, Spain wants to promote incentive programs so that the population can recycle more and more. For example, to reach 90% of recycled plastic bottles by 2029. In this sense, Recysmart becomes a good ally thanks to its ability to know the type of container that each person puts in the container.

TIDE Plastic: second life to waste

On the other hand, MAREA Plastic is a machine that gives waste a second life. This project, created at the University of Malaga, collects and processes plastic waste to create new value products.

Collection, treatment, transformation, dissemination. These are four concepts that summarize the alternative circular economy proposed by the MAREA Plastic project, born at the Smart-Campus of the University of Malaga. It was the students who, fascinated by the precious plastic movement that emerged in the Netherlands in 2013, decided to help end the scourge of plastic pollution. Carmen Ladrón de Guevara, coordinator and principal investigator -along with Óscar de Cózar, manager and coordinator of the project- was at Innovaspain as part of the Transfer Forum held at FYCMA. "We have been working on MAREA Plastic for a year and we still have another year to develop it," he says.

The Precious Plastic movement, the seed of the Malaga project, is based on a network of workspaces where all tools and machines are found to give plastics a second life and become valuable objects. "It's an interesting project that not only raises awareness about the recycling of plastics, but also helps to show that plastics can have an attractive second life," explained Carmen Ladrón de Guevara.
All this is done through the creation of a laboratory that allows the creation of new products or objects from the reuse of plastic waste generated at the university. Mass production of plastic waste is currently one of the main sources of pollution. There are already more than 8 billion tons of plastic in the sea alone, and these numbers continue to grow significantly each year.

During the interview, the researcher points to the machines. On the one hand, the crusher that allows us to disassemble the plastic containers we know into small chips or plastic flakes, and on the other hand, the extrusion machine that manages to turn these plastic chips into threads of reusable material, which will later be used as raw materials. He brought his equipment to Transfer, "because it's essential for people to see and manipulate plastic to realize the usefulness of MAREA Plastic," he says.