The most brutal part is not that China is using AI to sort garbage. It is that China has pushed waste management so far that the old problem has reversed. China used to worry about having too much garbage to process. Now some waste-to-energy plants are facing the opposite... problem: not enough garbage. Previously sealed landfills may even have to be reopened, not because China failed, but because waste has become fuel, feedstock, data, and part of an industrial recycling loop. This is what China does best. It takes the ugliest, dirtiest, most ignored corner of urban life — garbage — and turns it into engineering, automation, energy recovery, environmental governance, and industrial optimization. Even trash gets absorbed into the machine. In many countries, garbage is where governance collapses. In China, even garbage becomes a system.show more

This is the future I have imagined about a decade ago, but I was thinking the United States would do it. I'm glad to see China figuring it out.

they make fake food out of it, even! And people eat it! what a great country.

Your country even funds euthanasia for the poor, and Congress openly pays homage to the Nazis; your jealousy is truly disgusting.

@FringeViews Thing is that some countries just DIRECTLY PRODUCE JUNK FOOD not as a mean to recycling, just directly producing actual garbage to be eaten. There's some kinda difference, imho... 🤷‍♂️

@FringeViews No garbage is more rotten and foul than the brain of a colonial lackey.

@FringeViews It's litterally insane to think that #US food is somehow sane..... I agree with walls on the #US borders, if they're meant not to make mess abroad with all of that garbage, and force them in... 🤷‍♂️

@FringeViews Then we agree on one thing: the real garbage export is not China turning waste into energy. It is America turning industrial junk food, moral rot, and imperial mess into a global product.

It’s because in the US its frequently more profitable to game the system for profits vs producing goods and services, China has a very simple flat tax system. so in china one is incentivized to make money, in the US play tax games.

China will gladly sell Waste to Energy systems @~$250 per annual ton of capacity.

China, one of the most heavily populated countries, figured out how to deal with trash, but the supposed geniuses in India would rather bathe in it while they eat cow shit.

西方世界估计早就忘了，科技的发展是为了造福人类这个目标。光想着用来剥削赚钱了。

Meanwhile, in some third world country called UK, plastic films and plastic bags are no longer treated as recyclables because the recycling plant can't handle them. So UK is solving the problem not by AI but policy change and polluting the environment.

Start shipping it in from India. There’s piles of garbage higher than the Himalayas and rivers of garbage larger than the Amazon River. There’s an endless infinity of garbage strewn around, free for the taking, in India. Just watch out for the human feces.

In America trash is sorted by SEIU....then buried in landfills to contaminate the water supply killing 2 birds with 1 stone, a regulatory monopoly used to fill party coffers plus a tool to destroy assets not owned by party elites (municipal water supplies).

How come it still takes so long to get my bag scanned at the airport?

This is what happens when you educate your population. The opposite happens when you praise the poorly educated.

Also typical that China is using AI to help get rid of garbage, while the West uses AI to create it 🙃

But isn’t burning plastics polluting? The reason the waste is not burned in the western countries?

What a communal society can achieve when its leadership has the wisdom, integrity & courage to protect the public sector (incl the gov) from private “interests” Decisions based on what’s good for the public long term Colonial capitalism = private owning & controlling the public

@smerkinkones See, whilst our country argues over Russia & wanks it's self off over AI data centres, China are just getting on with advancing their lives

Start buying up landfills now - that's where the precious metals are going. Plasma ought to make it feasible.

You people are retarded. They've just build more incineration plants than they need. The tech is old and is used all over the world. It's just bad planning and they put a PR BS on top of it The garbage that you can burn or recycle is just a small % of total garbage. BS propaganda

Just amazing how China becomes 🤗

We have that tech since the first oil crisis and i´m pretty sure we shared said tech with China back in the 1980´s or 1990´s... (

China sorts recycling robotically meanwhile in parts of the UK you need to sort your waste into as many as 3 or 4 different bins. China is thinking about efficiency on a societal scale, the UK only thinks about the immediate costs and not the long term impact.

when Landfills become MINES we are on the right track again.

Where there is muck, there's brass!

@JewelAnneNonny THIS is how AI should be used

It's not entirely a good news story 1. 1000 plants is over capacity when they are running only at 60% 2. Burning trash still pumps massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere 3. Fly ash: categorised as a hazardous material China's plants generated 13m tones in 2024

China steadily becomes more and more an example for the planet. The Chinese economy is a bubble waiting to burst? The Chinese economy is just getting going. I for one, am deeply grateful.

Meanwhile, the US is using AI to bomb kids’ schools, produce AI slop, and undermine the education system.

Looks like China ahead of the game moving towards 100% waste management systems. Problems> opportunity > solutions. While reducing excess consumption is optimal, for the time being keeping waste out of natures habitat is the priority..

Recircular economy is the only real way humanity can sustain the current use of the planets finite resourses

@PubicZirconium !!!!! I always thought it would be cool if AI could somehow be used for recycling, but this is so much cooler than I even imagined!

The most absurd thing about this is that HUMANS ARE THE ONLY SPECIES THAT CREATES GARBAGE!!! Think about that! No other living creatures produces waste!!

spent weeks tuning a vision rig to sort scrap, meanwhile real plants actually run out of feedstock, my delta arm would probably short circuit from embarrassment

and into power, and electricity

@MayMayln Garbage in but Good stuff Out, imagine that!