Amazon-backed Glacier gets $16M to expand its robot recycling fleet

Summary

The world has a trash problem. The amount of stuff we throw away is expected to nearly double, to 3.8 billion metric tons, by 2050. Reducing what we use would go a long way to addressing the issue, but let’s face it, we’re not very good at buying less either. That leaves recycling, which has its own problems. People routinely try to recycle dirty yogurt cups or toss plastic in the aluminum bin. It all makes recycling more expensive because, ultimately, someone has to manually pick out the unwanted stuff. In response, several companies have been building automated systems to sort recyclables, including Glacier, a six-year-old company that has developed inexpensive robotic arms controlled by computer vision to identify over 30 different types of materials. The startup has deployed its robots in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, Phoenix, and now Seattle. As Glacier looks to expand its robot fleet to more municipalities, it recently raised a $16 million Series A, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The round was led by Ecosystem Integrity Fund with participation from AlleyCorp, Alumni Ventures, Amazon Climate Pledge Fund, Cox Exponential, Elysium, New Enterprise Associates, One Small Planet, Overlap Holdings, Overture, VSC Ventures, and Working Capital Fund. Materials recovery facilities — or MRFs, as sorting facilities are called — are getting squeezed on both ends, Rebecca Hu-Thrams, Glacier’s co-founder and CEO, told TechCrunch. Governments want more waste to be recycled, but MRFs are having a hard time finding enough people to staff the sorting line. Industry-wide, turnover is extremely high. A typical MRF will have to hire five times per year for a single sorting position. The job is so undesirable that one MRF operator told Hu-Thrams that, even though his wages were higher, he was concerned about losing workers to a new warehouse set to open nearby. “Would you rather stand at a conveyor belt and sort through people’s trash, or would you rather be ...