Improving The Recycling Rate of Used Printer Cartridges Through Automatic Sortation

在英国，打印机墨盒是一个主要的环境问题，在英国，它们占电子垃圾的很大比例。尽管英国是欧洲打印机墨盒的最大消费国之一，但英国每年只回收15%的打印机墨盒。其余的最终进入垃圾填埋场，在那里它们需要数千年的时间才能分解，同时向环境中释放有毒物质。最具挑战性的是，目前的墨盒回收过程是劳动密集型的，效率低下，第一阶段需要人工检查标签以对其进行分类。这在回收链中造成了一个瓶颈。因此，该项目将开发一种机器视觉算法来自动对打印机墨盒进行分类，这是英国墨盒回收行业的一大瓶颈。通过消除这一障碍，这项创新将培育一个更可持续的墨盒回收行业，其中产生的电子垃圾更少，并有助于实现政府2050年的净零目标。

Printer cartridges are a major environmental problem in the UK, where they account for a large proportion of electronic waste. Despite being one of the biggest consumers of printer cartridges in Europe, the UK recycles only 15% of them annually. The rest end up in landfills, where they take thousands of years to decompose while releasing toxic substances into the environment. Most challengingly, the current cartridge recycling process is labour-intensive and inefficient, where the first stage requires human workers to manually inspect the label to sort them. This creates a bottleneck in the recycling chain. Therefore, this project will develop a Machine Vision algorithm to automate the sortation of printer cartridges, which is a major bottleneck in the UK cartridge recycling industry. By removing this obstacle, the innovation will foster a more sustainable cartridge recycling industry, where less e-waste is generated and contribute toward the government's 2050 Net Zero target.