Improving The Recycling Rate of Used Printer Cartridges Through Automatic Sortation

打印机墨盒是英国的一个主要环境问题，在电子废物中占很大比例。尽管英国是欧洲最大的打印机墨盒消费国之一，但每年仅销售15%的墨盒。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和低效的，其中第一阶段需要人工检查标签以对其进行分类。这在回收链中形成了瓶颈。因此，该项目将开发一种机器视觉算法，以自动化打印机墨盒的分拣，这是英国墨盒回收行业的主要瓶颈。通过消除这一障碍，这项创新将促进一个更可持续的墨盒回收行业，减少电子废物的产生，并为政府的2050年净零目标做出贡献。

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.