Greyparrot

“Previously, we would have to wait three or four days to find out how our adjustments impacted the material stream. Now, I get feedback in a matter of hours and can adjust parameters again if needed. It’s really increased output for that stream.”

““AI bridges the gap that NIR can’t, and tells us what waste objects were used for. It completely expands what we can do in terms of sorting.””

““Greyparrot allows us to gather a lot of valuable information from our sorting facilities and enhance our knowledge of packaging, sorting technologies and the sorting yield of the installation.””

“Don’t be afraid of the technology. People don’t like change and disruption, but try it, and you’ll see the benefits. We keep data for ourselves at the moment, but there’s big potential for a platform where everyone can report in the same way, with compatible data.”

“Try it for yourself, and find your specific application for AI. For us, it’s been really interesting to track variation in quality and volume throughout the day. It allows you to take a proactive approach to staffing and operations, and plan ahead.”

“With data gathered throughout the day, it’s possible to make informed commercial decisions. We can better understand what we’re sending to customers, and decide who our most valuable suppliers are.”

“Everyone in the recycling industry has done a million composition trials. With this system, it’s like we have a 24/7 sampling system . Senior leadership can then make decisions based on data.”

“Fifteen years ago we adopted near-infrared (NIR) technology, the best tech at the time. Requirements have now changed, particularly when it comes to distinguishing between food and non-food grade material. AI bridges the gap that NIR can’t, and tells us what waste objects were used for. It completely expands what we can do in terms of sorting.”

“There’s not a day I don’t see an opportunity to do something different, or better. The waste sector could be as advanced as something like the automotive industry, but we’re not yet there as a group.”

“Access to continuous, high-resolution data will allow us to detect performance issues instantly, reduce downtime, recover more valuable materials, and improve the purity of our product streams. This technology will help us make informed decisions, adapt to operational changes, and ultimately serve our communities more efficiently.”

“The accuracy is a massive help for us because we’re trading on our name, and on our brand. We can all stand by our quality stamps. If we couldn’t, our business development team wouldn’t be able to sell our product. Customers are open to buying from us because our quality is so consistent.”

“We plan to use this data to guide and assess future investments. It’s helping us understand the ROI we might get from certain infrastructure — including a new facility.”

“The further we come in the AI adoption process, the more applications we start to think of. The Greyparrot team has also been really cooperative in finding solutions for our specific facility. Eventually, we would like to integrate the system with machinery like our air drum separator – using AI to increase or decrease their activity in response to changing material composition.”

“For us, adopting Greyparrot Analyzer was a way to get more process control. With continuous data on our material, I can maximise yields by tweaking processes in response: a little more airflow in our drum separator, or a bit of adjustment on the near-infrared system.”

“With 24/7 data, we can reduce our manual analysis to just one sample a week. We get a lot more visibility at a lower cost. That allows us to look at things like shift patterns, how performance changes throughout the day, and highlight any trends in sorting accuracy or purity that might inform the way we manage our operations.”

“We aspire to be at the forefront of our industry's development in Norway. We believe that taking chances with new solutions, and collaborating with technology companies such as Greyparrot, is part of our responsibility as a waste management company, in order to support the development of the industry. Our project with Greyparrot is a part of this vision, and we're excited to explore how their AI system can be adapted to our specific waste streams.”

“If you look only at the composition, you can tell that there’s a general problem appearing in residue. But that datapoint alone just tells us the symptom, not the cause. If you also look at the tonnage, the amount of Tetra Pak cartons is increasing. That tells us to look for a problem in the Tetra Pak line specifically.”

“That is Greyparrot's biggest benefit. You have a live image of what we are doing right now in the process.”

“During the time we've worked with Greyparrot, you can see that the accuracy of the Analyzer and our manual analysis coming closer and closer.”

“Every scanner we have can ‘speak’ with each other to calculate what is input and what is output, so we know exactly which materials are passing through the facility, and where they are being separated.”

“We wanted to know exactly what we did in that last time frame. Then you know: this came in, this went out, and this is how our sorting system performed.”

“After that, we wanted to pinpoint why those trends were happening. So we made an alert dashboard, and also a KPI dashboard.”

“Ultimately, I’d love to have AI automation on all of our inputs and outputs to remove human error from the data collection process entirely. We’d love to have real-time data across the entire facility.”

“The price we charge our customers depends completely on purity, so if we can use data from AI to prove that our natural PET bales are of high purity, for example, that’s a win-win: our customers are confident in a pure product, and we can price it appropriately.”

“Materials like the paper labels on some plastic objects can cause blockages in our wash plants. Real-time information enables us to monitor things like paper, which means we can prepare as soon as it arrives in our facility rather than taking a reactive approach to downtime”