A London start-up founded in 2022 that uses cameras and coloured lasers to show human pickers which valuable recyclables to pull off recycling lines.
Sorted builds technology for recycling plants. Items arrive on conveyor belts in a mixed stream, and people stand at the line picking out valuable material by hand. Sorted's system uses computer vision, a light-based measuring method called spectroscopy and artificial intelligence to spot items worth recovering, then uses coloured lasers to point them out to the human pickers. The idea is to help people do the job better rather than replace them. In its first deployment the company says it improved the recovery of material that would otherwise be thrown away by more than 50%. Material that is not picked can end up burned or in landfill, so catching more of it keeps resources in use.
The company was founded in London in 2022. Arthur Goujon, co-founder and chief technology officer, has more than 15 years in management and technology, including a senior role at the waste company Suez, which is now one of Sorted's customers. His co-founder, Luis Espinosa, has experience scaling businesses including Uber and DiDi. Mr Goujon has described the approach as "We use AI to augment and better enable human pickers". The company's aim is to help recyclers recover more value from waste, which cuts emissions and the amount of material sent for incineration. A WRAP director said it "will be key to the recycling sector capturing more valuable material".
Sorted is London-based, and its customers are waste and recycling firms in the UK and France. Named UK customers in 2024 were Suez UK and Cawleys, a family-run recycling company. We did not find the address of its office or any workshop, how many people work there, or whether it has people based at customers' sites. The articles we read are from April 2024, so any newer customers or sites are not covered here.
The pages we read do not describe Sorted's internal culture. What they show is a small company whose founders have worked inside large waste and technology companies and who talk about working alongside the people on the line. The company said it planned to grow its business development and technical teams. Those are the founders' own words, so please treat them as the company's view rather than something independently checked.
Companies like this employ computer vision and machine learning engineers who teach the system to recognise materials, hardware and optics engineers who build and fit the camera and laser units, software developers, and field engineers who install and support systems inside working recycling plants. Business development and customer success staff work with the waste companies that use the system. If you like maths, computing, physics or electronics and want to see them applied to real waste problems, this is a clear example. Check its website for openings.
Website: www.sortedtech.io
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