AI waste analytics gives Italy’s recycling and waste giant the clarity they need to sort more efficiently, and deliver purer products.
Meet A2A
With over 12,000 employees, A2A is a leader in Italy’s environmental sector. From waste collection to material and energy recovery (and everything in between), they operate according to a circular economy model that transforms waste into resources.
Extracting more value from waste material
An efficient separation process is critical for businesses like A2A that recover value from mixed municipal waste.
Paper and plastic streams need to be as pure as possible to extract maximum value, but manual sampling didn’t offer enough insight into composition to target contaminants.
“As a company that collects and treats waste, a key point for us is to be able to extract the maximum value out of the waste that we manage.”
– Guglielmo Carra, Innovation Manager at A2A
Automated composition monitoring
To achieve that, they needed to increase their understanding of the hundreds of tonnes of material that run through their plants on a daily basis.
They use Greyparrot Analyzer to automate waste composition analysis at scale, giving them a better understanding of sorting efficiency and fluctuations in material purity.
“We needed AI-enabled machine vision to detect materials that current processes cannot. Greyparrot’s software gives us insight that is helping us maximise our material recovery and purity.”
– Patrick Oungre, Head of Innovation at A2A
95%+ accurate sorting, guided by AI
Our pilot project with A2A began in 2020, and has since evolved into a long-term partnership:
- The A2A team installed our Analyzer Units in their facilities without having to adjust existing infrastructure.
- When comparing automated analytics to manual sorters, A2A found that AI was over 95% accurate, and a far more scalable way to gather waste data.
- Real-time insight into waste streams allows operations managers to make data-driven adjustments to their processes, and accurately report on product purity.
“We’re now able to get composition analysis done in continuum, and in real time.
We can create metrics and data sets that inform our decision-making on how to optimise our [waste] selection and sorting processes.”
– Guglielmo Carra, Innovation Manager at A2A
Learn how the Greyparrot Analyzer system works here.
