Food & Drink
18 May 2025
This article first appeared in our World Environment Day 2025 issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Let’s start with a sobering fact: every minute, a lorry-load of plastic enters our oceans.
By 2040 that could triple unless we act. Fast.
But here’s the twist: the same technology that’s powering your Netflix recommendations might also be able to save us from drowning in disposable coffee cups.
South Korea, a country that once had the highest per-capita plastic consumption in Asia, is betting big on artificial intelligence to clean up its act.
Its goal is to eliminate plastic waste by 2040.
Ambitious? Absolutely. Impossible? Not if its army of AI rubbish-sorting robots has anything to say about it.
Recycling should be simple, shouldn’t it? Chuck your bottle in the bin, feel virtuous, repeat.
But here’s the kicker: even in eco-conscious South Korea, only 23% of collected plastics actually get recycled. The rest? Landfilled, incinerated or, worse, shipped overseas to become someone else’s problem.
Enter AMP Robotics. Its AI-powered systems, like the AMP Neuron platform, are flipping the script by processing 80 billion waste items annually and sorting plastics with up to 99% accuracy.
That’s something humans, who average 70-80% accuracy, just can’t match.
‘It’s like teaching a toddler to spot Smarties in a sandpit, but at industrial scale’, quips Matanya Horowitz, AMP’s founder.
The numbers don’t lie: facilities using AMP’s tech see contamination rates drop by 90% while doubling output.
In Virginia, one plant boosted recycled material volume by 10% overnight.
Not bad for a bunch of metal arms with camera eyes.
Walk through Seoul today and you’ll spot residents casually feeding plastic bottles into AI-powered bins.
These smart receptacles, over 1,000 of which have been installed nationwide, identify materials in seconds using cameras and machine learning.
In return? Points redeemable for cash.
One user reportedly earned the rough equivalent of £100 monthly, turning eco-guilt into grocery money.
But South Korea’s ambitions go deeper. The government’s £5.2 billion AI semiconductor programme isn’t just about beating Silicon Valley, it’s about rewiring waste management.
At recycling plants like Hwaseong’s, AI systems now remove impurities from plastic streams using spectral imaging, predict optimal cleaning temperatures to save energy and track recycled granules through blockchain to ensure they become new products, not landfill filler.
‘We’re not just sorting rubbish’, says Hong Seong-en, a recycling plant manager; ‘we’re data-mining the waste stream.’
Here’s the elephant in the server room: training a single AI model can emit 284 tonnes of CO2, equivalent to five cars’ lifetime emissions.
Google’s environmental report revealed a 13% emissions jump in 2024, partly from AI data centres.
But before you cancel your ChatGPT subscription, there’s hope.
Companies like Google now power AI training with renewable energy, while Microsoft’s Planetary Computer uses AI to monitor deforestation.
As Kate Brandt, Google’s chief sustainability officer, puts it: ‘AI’s both the arsonist and firefighter in the climate crisis.’
The real magic happens when AI bridges the gap between individual action and systemic change. Take Recyco’s facility in Northern Ireland: after installing AMP robots, it doubled sorting speeds while slashing labour costs.
At Evergreen’s rPET plants, AI helped boost annual recycled plastic output from 40 million to 147 million pounds.
But can tech alone fix this?
Even with AI, only 5-6% of plastics get recycled globally. That’s why South Korea is pairing robotics with radical policy: banning single-use plastics, incentivising reuse and deploying 1,000 more AI bins by 2026.
The OECD’s latest report paints a stark choice: without drastic action, annual plastic production could hit 736 million tonnes by 2040.
Even with AI-driven recycling, we’d still dump 300 million tonnes into ecosystems.
But here’s where it gets interesting. New bio-catalysts like South Korea’s KUBU-M12 enzyme can break down PET plastic in 12 hours, a process that normally takes centuries.
Pair that with AMP’s sorting bots, and suddenly ‘permanent recycling’ doesn’t sound so sci-fi.
As I write this, Seoul’s AI bins are crunching through their 500 millionth plastic bottle.
Meanwhile, algorithms hum with potential to either doom or save our oceans.
The lesson? Technology isn’t the hero or villain here; we are.
As a Busan negotiator muttered during plastic treaty talks: ‘AI won’t save us from ourselves.’ But it might just buy us enough time to figure it out.
About Neel Zaver
Neel Zaver is a biologist and creative who is using his work to showcase the inspiring work of organisations around the world for the environment, conservation and our planet. His goal is to instil hope by profiling those working to create a positive future for us all.
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