Improving The Recycling Rate of Used Printer Cartridges Through Automatic Sortation

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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.