WASHINGTON POST • January 18, 2022
For a pair of start-ups, no kitchen would be complete without a new kind of home appliance: one that makes recycling easier. The two companies are tackling a flaw in our waste management systems that many people probably aren’t aware of. Much of the material we toss into our recycling bins don’t actually ever get recycled. Lasso’s machine uses sensors, cameras and AI to determine whether the stuff you’ve put inside can be recycled. From there, the remaining plastic, glass and metal products are steam cleaned, broken apart and stored separately in a series of bins based on type to prevent contamination. ClearDrop’s Minimizer, a trash can-sized plastics compactor, takes all of your soft plastics into a slot onto the top of the machine, and once it has had enough it heats and compresses the bags to form a slightly squishy brick.