A London AI company, founded in 2019, whose camera systems watch waste on conveyor belts to show recycling plants and packaging brands exactly what is passing through.
Greyparrot uses artificial intelligence to look at waste. Cameras mounted above conveyor belts at recycling and sorting sites analyse each item in real time, and the software builds a live picture of what is going through the plant. Its products include the Greyparrot Analyzer, which automates waste analysis; Sync, which helps make facilities smarter; and Deepnest, a platform that gives packaging teams at consumer brands data on how their packaging actually performs in recycling. The company says more than 300 Analyzer units are active in over 20 countries. It chose its name after a bird known for copying human behaviour, a comparison it draws with its AI.
Its mission, in its own words, is "to use AI to digitise the waste value chain and accelerate our transition to a circular economy". It says it wants to help waste professionals recover more material, help packaging brands design more recyclable products, and give regulators data they can use for practical policy. The founders are Mikela Druckman, chief executive, Ambarish Mitra and Nikola Sivacki, who is head of deep learning. Ms Druckman has told the BBC about the scale of the problem: "In a single day, you will have literally mountains of waste in one facility and it just keeps coming."
Greyparrot's registered address is in London SE16 (Surrey Quays), and its about page says the team works across the UK and Europe. Its named partners include Veolia, Suez and Biffa, which are all big UK waste operators, and it has a partnership with Bollegraaf and Van Dyk, which build recycling plants. We did not find the number of people based in London.
On people and culture, the company says it has over 50 people from 23 nationalities. Anja Prevodnik, head of partnerships, said: "It's rewarding to know we're working to keep waste from destroying even more ecosystems around the world." The company says it takes a planet-first approach and sees waste as a resource that can be recovered. These are Greyparrot's own claims about itself, and we found no independent review of working life there.
A company that sells AI and hardware to waste sites needs a wide mix of staff. These include machine learning and deep learning engineers, software and data engineers, hardware and installation engineers, people who work with recycling plants and brands, and the commercial, marketing and operations teams that support them. Training an AI on dirty, crushed items such as a crumpled drinks bottle is one of the problems the founder has talked about, which shows how practical the work is. If you enjoy maths, computing or engineering and care about waste, it is a strong example. Check the company website for current roles.
Website: www.greyparrot.ai
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