51³Ô¹ÏÍø

Systems combining AI, computer vision and robotics promise to improve recycling efficiency and address a worldwide labour shortage in waste management.

, a high-tech waste sorting company started by students at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø in 2019, has been acquired by a US waste management company. CP Group, which is headquartered in San Diego, has been collaborating with Recycleye since 2023 on waste sorting systems that combine computer vision with artificial intelligence. Now it has taken a majority stake in its partner.

This acquisition brings together the industry’s leading material recovery facility integrator with Europe’s most established AI-based sorting company. Terry Schneider Chief Executive, CP Group

“This acquisition brings together the industry’s leading material recovery facility integrator with Europe’s most established AI-based sorting company,” said Terry Schneider, chief executive of CP Group. The two companies have already completed 23 installations together in the US and Europe.

Recycleye’s 45-person team will remain in place, continuing to serve international customers from London. The merger will unlock technical synergies that enable alignment of products and technologies across the two companies, the partners say, with further investments in engineering and R&D leading to new innovations.

“CP Group’s industry expertise will accelerate our growth, supported by Recycleye’s multidisciplinary engineering team working toward the shared goal of extracting value from all waste,” said Victor Dewulf, co-founder and chief executive of Recycleye. 

He and co-founder Peter Hedley came up with the idea behind Recycleye when they were Master’s students at 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, studying in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Computing respectively. They combined computer vision, machine learning and robotics to produce a system capable of sorting municipal waste more accurately and more consistently than is possible with human waste pickers.

After founding their company, the pair participated in the 2020 , 51³Ô¹ÏÍø’s flagship entrepreneurial competition, taking home a share of the Social Impact prize. And in the early years of the company, they continued to work with 51³Ô¹ÏÍø, setting challenges for the next generation of Master’s students.

“I would give environmental engineering students topics that were useful to us, and we did the same with students in the computing department, giving them access to some of our waste databases,” Mr Dewulf says. “This was ‘moonshot’ work, and while most of it didn’t work, once in a while they would find something that has been really useful.”

Recycleye has also recruited heavily from 51³Ô¹ÏÍø when building its team of engineers and developers.

Purity and recovery

Recycleye has developed two kinds of waste sorting machine, driven by the same computer vision system. The first uses robot arms to pick out items for recycling. While limited in the speed at which they can work, these robots are compact and can be installed easily on existing waste lines.

The second kind of machine uses air jets to separate items for recycling, shooting plastic bottles, bricks or batteries into a collection bin while the residue falls away. This approach, originally developed by CP Group subsidiary MSS, requires a larger installation, but is much faster, sorting up to 2,000 items per minute. 

“At Recycleye we reduce the cost of sorting, through automation and machines that can sort at a much higher rate, but we also increase the value of the sorted material,” Mr Dewulf explains. “That’s done in two ways, first by producing cleaner material, with a higher purity, but also by sorting with a higher granularity.” 

If you can reduce the cost of sorting and raise the value of the material produced, almost everything will get recycled. Victor Dewulf Chief Executive, Recycleye

For example, a tonne of mixed PET bottles will be worth less than a tonne of PET bottles that are all the same colour, which are simpler to re-process. 

“If the cost of sorting is higher than the value of the material you produce, it will not get recycled,” says Mr Dewulf. “But if you can change that balance, by reducing the cost of sorting and raising the value of the material, almost everything will get recycled.”

Recycleye describes the acquisition, for an undisclosed sum, as a significant US investment in both AI and manufacturing in the UK.

“In Europe, we have an advantage when it comes to some of these technologies, not just from the AI side, where there is a great ecosystem of research and development, but also on the recycling,” Mr Dewulf says. “Because regulation is pushed a bit more in Europe, the recycling sector is a few years ahead of the US when it comes to the technologies that need to be developed.”