Dutch recycling giant Bollegraaf Group is investing in UK AI company Greyparrot, which utilizes computer vision for trash analytics, in another example of the race to speed the adoption and revolutionary potential of AI.
The veteran manufacturer of MRFs (Material Recovery Facilities) and “turnkey” recycling systems, founded in 1961 as a baler machinery maker, opened an innovation test center in the Netherlands in 2021 and hired an in-house AI team to integrate AI analytics with its recycling machinery, which led to some commercial rollouts.
London-based Greyparrot, a 2019 computer vision startup and TC Disrupt battlefield alum, has spent nearly five years developing and applying AI to municipal waste management processes to produce “waste intelligence”—data on binned plastics and other trash. It is essential for recycling companies to sell better products. The technology may also recover recyclable elements from mixed or contaminated waste streams that would otherwise be dumped or burned.
Greyparrot’s second significant jigsaw piece is to go from data producer to decision-maker as the AI engine drives sorting and recovering machines to be more efficient. This is crucial as the globe produces more waste, increasing the need for smarter waste management to avoid drowning in rubbish.
In addition, in Europe, regulatory requirements on packaging and other producers to use more recycled materials are increasing incentives and stabilizing demand for better-quality recycled outputs to sell.
Greyparrot’s majority of deployments have involved retrofitting its AI devices to existing recycling plants, but it expects future waste recovery facilities to be built with AI from the start and use its technology (the Greyparrot Analyzer, its AI camera hardware unit) as the brain. It’s working toward a thesis of rising waste management automation, where AI-powered data-driven analytics become more deeply embedded in recycling facilities to optimize recovery rates, yield better outputs, and reduce waste.
Greyparrot has been developing APIs (Greyparrot Sync) to integrate with its customers’ sorting and recovery facilities. But Greyparrot claims the new relationship with Bollegraaf is meant to hasten this integration (or digitization) process since the latter adds decades of machines and robotics knowledge to their AI-powered waste recovery party.
Greyparrot CEO and co-founder Mikela Druckman tells Eltrys, “The big vision with Bollegraaf is really accelerating and leading on the digitization of the waste sector.” Bollegraaf is one of the world’s major plant builders, creating waste management infrastructure, including recycling and sorting facilities. We’re the top AI waste analytics player. Combining forces is allowing us to scale digitization faster and build smart MRFs that are fully adaptive and automated, transforming the waste industry by increasing efficiency, recovery, and material quality.
AI team transfer for $12.8 million strategic investment
In the strategic AI cooperation announced today, Bollegraaf’s AI vision business will be transferred to Greyparrot, which has six employees. Druckman said Greyparrot is buying “the AI models and also the team working on them” for its vision systems. Its new hires will stay in the Netherlands, where the UK firm will create its first office in continental Europe.
In exchange for a non-controlling, non-majority share in Greyparrot, Bollegraaf is investing $12.8 million in cash. (NB: The business raised $11 million in Series A financing in May 2022 after a $2.2 million seed two years earlier and is not seeking a B round.)
Druckman said they’re not releasing Bollegraaf’s investment methods or stake level, but she verified a 50:50 split between the cash investment and the purchase value of Bollegraaf’s AI business unit that’s crossing over. Acquiring AI developers costs above $1 million per person.
Greyparrot will manage Bollegraaf’s AI installations. She said it will evaluate each scenario to decide whether to move the implementation to Greyparrot’s tech or keep it. Greyparrot’s kit will be used for all Bollegraaf plant AI installations.
Bollegraaf will distribute and partner with Greyparrot to distribute its AI camera system hardware, which is used to extract analytics from waste streams and recycling plants in 14 countries, in 30–40 facilities. Though it has a presence in the US and expects the new strategic alliance to help it expand over the pond, the startup’s core market is Europe, where its software touches 70% of the market.
Druckman said Bollegraaf’s AI had the same purpose as Greyparrot’s, and the two teams produced “a lot of complementary” technology. Thus, joining forces will help the firm accelerate AI development. “Using some of their R&D will help us accelerate [development] on our side,” she said. We constantly improve and upgrade our analyzer hardware. Our roadmap includes that.”
“This was very important for Bollegraaf,” she said. “They had done R&D for years. By cooperating with us, they may speed product and technology development, as well as commercial distribution and scale. So it was win-win.”
Its investment does not impact its strategy or business model, Druckman said. Greyparrrot will offer its AI-powered waste analytics to other MRF companies while benefiting from Bollegraaf’s worldwide scale. (The latter reports 400+ MRFs and 3,100 recycling and sorting systems “designed and installed worldwide” with a global footprint from Northern America to Australia.) The UK startup will focus on AI, not machinery or robotics.
“A big part of the partnership is obviously—one—the commercial distribution and scale that they can provide because of their network,” she added, describing the deal’s motivations. “Plugging into retrofits and other new builds with our analyzers, AI, and digital capabilities.
Second, integrate data with Greyparrot Sync APIs into control systems and sorting systems, progressively achieving fully automated, smart MRFs. We’ll launch items jointly by combining our data with the analyzers and integrating them with their machines and systems.
Bollegraaf Recycling Solutions CEO Edmund Tenfelde stated:
Bollegraaf leads the world in fully-automated, revolutionary turnkey recycling systems with 63 years of expertise. More understanding and collaboration across the value chain are needed to boost recycling rates. We want to use AI to fuel fact-based and automated decision-making to give our clients a more accurate waste composition overview and maximize their ROI. This strategic investment and partnership with Greyparrot to offer trash analytics to forthcoming recycling infrastructure deployments and current plants worldwide is exciting. Bollegraaf’s expertise in recycling MRF automation, premium equipment, and unique technical skills backed by Greyparrot AI technologies create a winning combination.
System change obstacles
What are the major obstacles to boosting AI-powered trash processing efficiency? Druckman says plastics are tricky because there are many types of plastics in a waste stream with different levels of recyclability, making it important to be able to distinguish between them to recover as much of the recyclable plastics as possible.
“This is still where there’s work to be done,” she said. “Mostly, it’s about managing plastic type fluctuations and hard-to-recycle plastics. We’re also going into other areas where Bollegraaf and our partners operate, such as electronic waste and construction/demolition waste, which have slightly different dynamics, but the core principle is the same: recognizing and separating the material.
“In recent years, robotic arms have been emphasized as a source of separation in combination with AI. We created our technology and infrastructure to interface with robotic arms and other separation technologies, since we consider it one of many choices. This is crucial, as several mechanical separation systems currently exist that require digitization and AI integration.
“This is the existing infrastructure, and we really believe that we have to leverage a lot of the millions of dollars that have been invested in enhancing that and being able to plug into that infrastructure versus just looking at narrow use cases with new hardware.”
Recycling will always be a modest part of waste’s environmental impact. Druckman says this requires “system change” and a shift from extractive consumerism to a circular economy where reuse, sustainability, and lifespan are built into goods from the start to reduce throwaway trash. “Basically, reducing plastic use is critical to the solution,” she says. “Recovering and recycling—those alone will not solve the entire problem. We need to do those things in parallel.”
However, mankind is far from making that 180-degree flip. To make time for the more dramatic change in how we manufacture and consume items, more and smarter waste management infrastructure is needed to cope with the rubbish we’re still creating. Greyparrot believes we’ll need a major increase in waste management infrastructure and AI-driven efficiency to handle the tsunami of trash baked in and inevitable over the next few decades.
The startup estimates that only 1% of waste passing through management facilities is monitored, while even in “advanced” economies, 40% of waste sorting is still done by hand. If countries can be convinced to clean up their act, the opportunity to scale an automation-friendly, efficiency-focused waste management approach is huge.
Druckman believes the market is reaching a “turning point” due to European regulations like plastic taxes, which require packaging manufacturers to use recycled plastics, and EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility) rules, which require companies to address waste issues. She also predicts additional land-related pro-recycling policies in the coming years.
“That shift is happening,” she said. “Collaboration and commitment to infrastructure are increasing across the value chain. Policies, regulations, and commercial incentives are already underway to drive turnaround.
AI’s ability to produce more granular data on what’s being thrown away, how much, and where it’s going also allows brands to take on “post-consumption responsibility” for their products’ afterlife, according to Druckman. Whether by using less packaging that’s easier to recycle or by funding product material recycling and recovery (ideally, both.),
Thus, data-driven insights and AI-enabled transparency into what’s being thrown out and not recovered might pressure producers to reduce waste.
Greyparrot, like other sustainability-focused firms, is interested in package design.
The UK business says its analytics may assist recycling specialists, plant builders, package makers, and FMCG companies in increasing recycling efficiency, compliance with recycling legislation, and recyclable packaging design. “Part of our vision is to use waste intelligence and insights on where packaging is growing, and obviously our technology’s ability to recognize the brand itself, to support information and better recycling of those materials and better packaging design,” Druckman said.
