Companies and restaurants often throw recyclable items in their dumpsters on accident. A company by the name of Compology started in San Francisco uses cameras and artificial intelligence to help companies watch what goes in their trash to keep the world cleaner.

The CEO of Compology Gates told reporters, “We’ve found that most businesses and people have the right intentions about recycling, but oftentimes they just don’t know what the proper way to recycle is”.

Compology puts cameras and sensors that send pictures to the company several times a day. The Camera then can tell workers if the dumpster is full and if there are items that should be thrown in the recycle dumpster.  Gates said the company’s cameras can cut the amount of non-recyclable materials thrown in waste containers by as much as 80%.

In a Los Vegas McDonalds cameras showed that the workers were generally doing a good job. Sensors picked up some trash that may have been placed accidentally, but in the grand scheme of things the company was doing a great job. Once the bags were caught by Compology, a text was sent to managers to let them know they should be removed before the dumpsters were emptied.

In the seven years since it started, Compology has taken over 80 million images and has over 162,000 cameras installed all over the country. Gates sees his work to be very important because in 2017 China stopped taking recycling materials from the United States because of mixed containment.

I believe that Compology should be standard for every company because people don’t realize how important it is.