IMVIGR - Intelligent Machine Vision Inspection for Glass Recovery

The UK manufactures 750,000 tonnes of flat glass each year, three quarters of which goes into glazing products for buildings. In the UK, we generate almost 200,000 tonnes of post-consumer glass waste each year. Much of this goes to landfill or is crushed into aggregate. Glass is the perfect material for recycling, capable of 100% reuse within a modern circular economy. The main barrier to using more recycled glass for flat glass manufacture is the availability of recovered glass of an acceptable quality. This is because any slight contamination of the recycled glass used to manufacture flat glass will cause rejectable defects and result in several days of lost production, effectively cancelling out the environmental and cost benefits of recycling. Currently the recycled content of flat glass produced in the UK is between 20%--30%. I3D Robotics supported by Glass Technology Services aim to produce an integrated instrument capable of detecting contamination on recovered flat glass glazing products to encourage greater use of recycled content. This will enable recovery and support future development of circular economies for the UK's built environment, materials production, waste & recovery industries which have been dramatically impacted on by the COVID-19 pandemic.