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What if a piece of packaging could carry its own sorting instructions – invisible to a person, but readable by a sorting line – without changing how the package looks on a shelf?
A team of experts has been investigating codes that are invisible to the human eye but can be detected by sorting equipment – a technology that could help both consumers and recycling plants identify exactly what a piece of packaging is made of.
This research is part of the HolyGrail Project, which explores digital watermarking as a way to embed material and packaging information directly onto products. For sorting plants, a code that's automatically readable by optical sorting equipment would remove much of the ambiguity that currently comes from visually similar materials with very different recycling requirements – pointing towards a future where sorting accuracy depends less on what a material looks like and more on information it carries with it.
Get in touch with our team to discover how PICVISA's optical sorting and robotics solutions can fit your recycling operation.