Plastics recycling for remote areas and tourist Island destinations just got smarter and AIpowered.
The European Union-funded RECLAIM project has successfully deployed the world’s first portable, AI-driven robotic Material Recovery Facility (prMRF) in the popular Mediterranean summer destination of Kefalonia, largest of Greece’s Ionian Islands. This innovative solution enables on-site sorting of recyclables from municipal solid waste, increasing material recovery efficiency and reducing the need for costly waste transport to mainland facilities, thereby cutting carbon emissions.
The prMRF sets a new global standard in decentralised material recovery as the world’s first low-cost, autonomous and portable robotic system for remote regions. Until now, portable material recovery facilities have lacked the integration of smart, high-tech solutions that could enhance their productivity. As a result, waste sorting in these niche sectors have largely relied on manual sorting. RECLAIM project’s prMRF addresses this gap. The most remarkable feature of this robotic waste sorting system is its portable and compact design, housing state-of-the-art technologies inside a standard shipping container.
This unique feature enables rapid deployment in remote areas or alongside existing recycling plants in tourist-heavy island destinations, bringing close-to-source material recovery of recyclables. This flexibility has the potential to unlock new opportunities for recovering materials for recycling, thereby promoting a local circular economy for plastics.