“We know that when soft plastics are pre-sorted in a bag, it makes it much easier to be sorted at a facility, yet it still isn’t accepted. We have a strategy to autonomously sort these bags of collected soft plastics with Visual Learning Algorithms for object detection and robotics for automatic sorting and removal of the material at recycling facilities," he said.
Lamb believes this will have a “positive environmental impact” by reducing transportation costs and emissions, the need for manual labour in facilities, contamination in recycling streams, and eliminating the need for households to take soft plastics to drop off points and “most importantly, diverting soft plastic from landfill.”
Skrunch-It is also working with RMIT Activator to scale the business and develop new products, including making Skrunch-Its out of the same material it was designed to collect, to help build a more circular economy.
“We also have a new product in testing, which will allow any bag to be used as the collection device, not just a drawstring bag.”
Lamb said the Skrunch-It is currently being tested in some Tasmanian schools and he hopes to continue to grow industry connections so that impacts of his innovative product can be far-reaching.
“With the support of Australians, industry, and local councils, we’d like to make a future where every house has a soft plastic collection device like Skrunch-It, and the ability to recycle the whole bag in their home recycling bins instead of needing to take it to drop off points.”
“With the technology we are trying to build, we’d like to make it possible for people to collect other items that are recyclable but aren’t currently accepted in kerbside collection bins.” he said.
If you would like to purchase a Skrunch-It or find out more, visit the Skrunch-it website. If you would like to learn more about the Entrepreneurship and Marketing courses at RMIT, click here.
Story: Saskia Kostic