SIFT·1live demo
BOOTING

01 · The problem

A full bin is a design failure — and it happens in the last metre.

Households are asked to be the sorting layer of the entire recycling system — at the exact moment attention is lowest: tired, holding a dripping wrapper over a bin. The result is predictable. Food waste rides along with plastics, recyclables carry last night's dinner, and batteries end up wherever the throw was quickest.

2.01 Btmunicipal solid waste generated worldwide, every year
44%of that stream is food and green waste — perfect compost, landfilled
13.5%is recycled globally after all that bin confusion
33%is still openly dumped, untreated, into land and water

Source: World Bank, “What a Waste 2.0” (2018) — global municipal solid waste, 2016 data.

01

Contamination kills recycling

One greasy tray or half-full bottle can downgrade an entire kerbside batch. Recycling is only as good as the cleanest stream it touches — and contamination is judged at the bin, after the fact.

02

The “which bin?” pause

A coffee cup with a PE lining. A chip bag of plastic and foil. Composite packaging keeps multiplying faster than household knowledge does — so tired people default to the general bin.

03

Hazards slip through

Batteries and small electronics thrown into general waste are crushed in trucks and sorting plants. Waste-industry surveys report hundreds of facility fires every year linked to lithium-ion cells.

02 · How it works

Sorting, moved to the only moment it can be perfect: the instant of release.

01

Sense

An item lands in the scan zone. A 160° RGB-D camera, near-infrared spectrometer and load cell capture what it looks like, what it is made of and what it weighs.

02

Classify

The on-device model (SIFT-V3) names the object, material and contamination state in about a second — with a confidence score. Ambiguous items escalate: cloud assist first, then you.

03

Sort

The matching sealed compartment opens and the item is dropped in. Liquids and grease-contaminated pieces are diverted to General to protect the recyclable streams.

04

Learn

Every correction you make becomes a training signal. Over weeks the bin stops asking — and starts forecasting fill levels, compost output and collection day.

Contamination guard

Did you catch the coffee cup in the demo? Residual liquid and a polyethylene lining were detected mid-scan, so the cup was silently diverted to General — one dirty item, kept away from a whole batch of clean recyclables.

Hazard quarantine

The AA battery and the old phone never touch the compaction path. They land in a dedicated fire-lined drawer, ready for a battery-point drop-off — the single cheapest way to prevent collection-truck fires.

03 · Anatomy

Everything visible. Nothing fussy.

AI vision pod

RGB-D + NIR sensor pair under a flush sapphire window, watching the scan zone from the deck.

Four sealed compartments

12 L each, gasket-sealed with an activated-carbon filter — organic odours never reach the kitchen.

Hazard drawer

A 2 L fire-lined drawer for batteries and small e-waste. Quarantined, never compacted.

Ultrasonic fill sensing

Per-compartment level sensing feeds the app's fill forecast — no lifting lids to peek.

LED status ring

One glanceable ring around the pod: cream when resting, chartreuse while thinking, category colour while sorting, plum on hazard.

Low-power display

A 4.3″ panel for status, sorting reasons and collection-day countdown. It explains every decision.

12 V DC · 1.8 W idle

About the idle draw of a set-top box on standby; the sorting actuator only spends energy when you do.

SIFT OS + app

Fill forecasts, contamination coaching, compost tally — and a full decision log you can audit.

Design specification

CONCEPT · SIFT·1
Sorting streams
4 sealed compartments + hazard drawer
Compartment volume
4 × 12 L, gasket-sealed, carbon-filtered
Hazard drawer
2 L, fire-resistant lining, lockable
Sensing
160° RGB-D camera · NIR spectrometer · load cell · 4× ultrasonic fill sensors
Inference
On-device SIFT-V3, ≈1.2 s typical · cloud assist for ambiguity · human-in-the-loop review
Connectivity
Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth LE
Display
4.3″ low-power panel with decision explanations
Power
12 V DC · 1.8 W idle
Acoustics
< 38 dB during sorting
Dimensions
46 × 34 × 58 cm (W × D × H)
Weight
8.2 kg empty
Finish
Matte ivory polymer · oiled oak side grips
Software
SIFT OS with over-the-air model updates

04 · The impact

The bin doesn't just hold waste. It changes the last metre of the recycling system.

Organics become soil, not methane

Buried food waste rots without oxygen and releases methane — a greenhouse gas far more potent than CO₂ over 20 years. Sealed, vented and regularly emptied, the same peels become compost feedstock instead.

Recyclables stay worth recycling

A PET flake stream with no food residue commands a real price and actually gets reprocessed. Keeping one dirty item out of a clean batch is worth more than any poster on a kitchen wall.

Hazards are captured by design

Batteries quarantined at the bin never reach the shredder. Fewer fires, fewer heavy metals in leachate, and a household that knows where its e-waste is.

Modelled example · one year

For a two-person household (≈340 kg of waste a year), if the organic share were composted and the dry recyclables left clean instead of landfilled:

≈ 150 kgof food and garden waste diverted to compost
≈ 105 kgof clean, uncontaminated dry recyclables
≈ 25 kgCO₂e avoided (modelled, illustrative factors)

Illustrative model, not a measured result — exact figures depend on municipal streams and local processing. The session counter in the demo above uses the same conservative model.