Member - Plas'Tri

Plas'Tri is a student start-up from the entrepreneurial class of IOGS (french leading school in photonics). It aims at making plastic sorting easier and more efficient, especially for small sorting centers, by developing a low-cost plastic identification tool using infrared spectroscopy. Only 5% of the world's plastic production is recycled. In order to recycle plastic waste, one needs to know what kind of plastic it is. The problem is that there is many different types of plastic, such as PET or PVC for instance. In most developed countries, waste sorting centers are some kind of big factory, using fully automated machines capable of sorting 20 tons of plastic per hour. But these devices are expensive. In developing countries, since sorting centers usually emerges from local initiative they are a lot smaller and can't afford such devices. People in those centers do all the sorting manually ; Thus, they need 30 hours to sort 1 ton of plastic. Aiming at increasing the part of plastics recycled in the world, Plas'Tri is creating a plastic identification device affordable for those centers, aiming at increasing the volume of plastic they can handle. The developed technology will be open-source in order to spread its uses across the world.