Artificial Intelligence & The War on Contamination

In the latest episode of our NothingWasted! Podcast, we bring you a dynamic session from WasteExpo: “Artificial Intelligence & The War on Contamination.” The discussion features Jason Gates, CEO of Compology; Jason Rose, area vice president for the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia and Alaska at Waste Management; and Pat Carroll, president and CEO of Environmental Solutions Group.

Here’s a sneak peek into the speakers’ insights:

Jason Rose: Ultimately, what we want is less contamination. There’s obviously an economic incentive for customers. There are systemwide cost savings: we can run our lines faster without contamination; there’s improved marketability of that material as well; and, of course, the environmental benefits. And AI [artificial intelligence] can help us with all of these aspects.

Pat Carroll: When you look at the contamination issue and what’s happened with China, people are scrambling on how they will change. Is it an equipment solution? Is it a behavior change solution? Or are we going to just deal with it right now? So, large organization or small, it’s something that’s hitting everybody in the face right now. And we’re trying to understand how technology can help. We can use AI to detect all the contamination you want, but without a closed loop system that helps to change behavior, it won’t make a difference at the end of the day.

Jason Gates: One of the things we’ve seen is that today’s contracts need to be shifted to support the use of technology. Have that foresight in writing new contracts to include the option of using new tech. A lot of the ways in which contracts are currently written make technology use prohibitive for a lot of reasons that used to make sense but no longer do.

Listen to the full episode below and more episodes here.