With aluminum prices up 20%, recycling startups bet on AI to cash in

Rising gas prices have been a recurring headline since the Trump administration started its war against Iran in late February, but it’s not the only commodity affected by the conflict. Around 10% of the world’s aluminum is made in the Gulf region, so prices of the metal have reached levels not seen in the last several decades.

Even before the war in Iran, the U.S. government had flagged aluminum as a critical mineral. A large share of U.S. demand for aluminum is met by imports, and much of the metal the country does produce is recycled. For recycling startups, it’s a good time to be in business.

“Aluminum might be 1% of the garbage stream, but it often trades for over $1,000 per ton,” Matanya Horowitz, CTO at waste sorting startup Amp, told TechCrunch. “It actually ends up being one of the most significant individual commodities.”

Aluminum is one of the most recycled materials in the U.S., but even then, only about 20% is recovered, according to the EPA. Waste sorting startups have been pitching AI as a way to improve those figures.

Sortera, a metals recycling startup, recently opened its second facility in Tennessee, the company exclusively told TechCrunch. The new site doubles the company’s processing capacity to 240 million pounds, of which 90% to 100% is aluminum. That’s a sizable fraction of the 4.3 million metric tons the U.S. used last year.

The Indiana-based startup focuses on sorting aluminum scrap. It uses a range of different sensors, including lasers, cameras and X-ray fluorescence, to feed AI algorithms that classify each potato chip-sized piece of scrap to identify the specific grade of aluminum. By separating the grades at higher accuracy, Sortera can make more profit per pound.

Amp has taken a different approach, using an AI-powered sorting system to sift through both recycling and general waste streams.

This system uses sensors, including visible light and infrared cameras, to identify everything from wrappers to foil, and differentiate plastics from aluminum. As the waste stream flows through the system on conveyor belts, robotic arms and puffers pluck or blow the materials into different bins. Amp says its system is over 90% accurate at recovering specific materials, including aluminum.

“Half of the aluminum in a metro area — in places with successful recycling programs — are just in the garbage, not even touching the recycling system,” Horowitz said. For the metals industry, recycling facilities like the kind being built by Sortera and Amp could bolster supplies of a critical mineral used through the economy. 

“These types of projects are some of the biggest sources of domestically produced aluminum that are coming online in a given year,” he said.

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