The AI swarm creating a world without waste
A world without waste moves forward on two fronts: collection and processing. Three actually, as the initial design of products opens possibilities for processing.
The processing step is about manufacturing. Reverse manufacturing. It is about machines that, in their various guises, recover the nutrients in materials. It’s a whole lot simpler if the materials in are uniform.
The design step is only worth pursuing if it is clear that the products carefully designed can be collected and returned for processing.
The collection is what drives it all. The “last mile”, that bit where unwanted materials are discarded and then collected, is what unlocks all of the other opportunity.
Which is why a world without waste is rich in data. Data about where materials are unwanted. What they comprise of. Who owns them, when they can be collected, how they can be collected, how they can be separated. And on and on it goes.
It is also why a world without waste is rich in action. Action to separate materials, to collect them, to process them.
A world without waste brings together data with action. It takes data, decision and action at the finest grain possible. At the collection point. It disaggregates the dumb acts that create waste, and replaces it with smart acts that create nutrients. Countless small points of data, decision and action.
Humans are not capable of collecting the data, processing the data and taking the action needed for the countless small steps that keep nutrients in circulation. As a result, materials get junked. Nutrients become waste.
A world without waste removes the humans from the process of data, decision and action, and replaces them with AI. It begins with data.
Bins that use visual processing sensors to sort materials — within the bin. Collecting data on quantity and composition.
Bins that take this fine grained data and use it to consolidate separated loads up the line into progressively larger and more centralised operations. Each that can each add its own value in processing; of materials and data.
Swarms of small scale collectors, each making self-optimising decisions across a shared data pool, each hurrying nutrients to where they can be recovered. Continually refining decisions about how to separate, which design of collection best matches local needs for processing, which processing is becoming more viable.
Is glass needed for bottles, or for road base? If for bottles, then colour separate it. If for roads, then don’t.
Is food waste in a restaurant seasonal? Does it need more collections at particular times of year? Can collections be replaced by an anaerobic digester within the bin that produces gas for the cookers?
A world without waste requires human decisions to be replaced with sensors gathering data, AI driven decisions and machines taking action. Humans only get involved to apply creative thinking to improve the system architecture.
To repeat, humans need to operate at the level of systems design, not individual actor. Incentivising the inhuman and rational, integrating it into the human world.
A world without waste requires the swarm, nourished by data and micro-transactions and smart contracts. Re-forming the current dumb decisions around materials into smart decisions around nutrients.
It begins with sensors, fine grained, to gather data. AI to act on the data collected. And waste systems artists thinking deeply about these things.
Do you want to be a part of this conversation? Are you a developer of sensors? A programmer of AI? A blockchain enthusiast? A waste system artist ? A potential investor who can see the billion dollar opportunity?
I am developing up a “Blockchain and waste” conference, and am looking for fellow travellers. People who want to connect up ideas, to share how this is unfolding.
Because this conversation is global, the event will be in a central hub. I am leaning towards Hong Kong . Someplace that is easy to get to for a global community.
Interested? Reach out. The best place, at the moment, is LinkedIn.
