Circular Plastics Accelerator invests in Sorted
The Circular Plastics Accelerator, supported by Archipelago Ventures, makes an investment into AI-powered recycling startup Sorted
LONDON, 23 April 2024 – Sorted, a London-based recycling tech business, has raised £1.65 million in a seed funding round led by Pi Labs. Other investors include the circular economy-focused fund Archipelago Ventures, Circular Plastics Accelerator, Conduit Connect, Antler and angel investors.
About Sorted
Each year, 2.12 billion tonnes of waste is dumped globally, with devastating effects on our air, oceans and soil. Governments are increasing pressure to reduce reliance on single-use materials and increase recycled content. However, the waste industry is struggling to meet this demand because of the complexity behind sorting recycled materials such as plastic, compounding a missed $133 billion opportunity.
Sorted is tackling the global sustainability issue by enabling human pickers to better sort and recover targeted materials. Using computer vision, spectroscopy and coloured lasers driven by AI, their solution identifies, differentiates and pinpoints valuable items on recycling lines. This unique use of AI offers a digitised solution to a very physical problem.
In its first use case, by increasing picker performance, Sorted has improved residual waste recovery by over 50%. Instead of going to incineration, each item recovered represents additional revenue potential for Sorted’s customers, and reduced carbon emissions.
The startup already counts some of the largest waste management and recycling firms across the UK and France as customers, including SUEZ UK and Cawleys.
