Let’s see where this takes us.
I don’t know about you, but I have been waiting for someone to develop a solution to combat some of the recycling hardships we encounter daily. Every year, I read additional facts about recycling that seem to put many things into perspective. These are some of the recent details that not only surprised me; they also highlighted a significant problem that exists.
The amount of wood & paper we throw away is enough to heat 50,000,000 homes for 20 years.
If all our newspaper was recycled, we could save 250,000,000 trees each year.
In the US, we use 2,500,000 plastic bottles every hour. You can imagine the amount that makes it to the recycle bins and the landfill. My guess is more make it to landfills.
There is no limit to the number of times we can recycle aluminum. Think about those soda pop and beer cans.
I think it is well documented we as humans can do better recycling or converting our waste into reusables to prevent pollution both on land and in water.
This is where the innovation comes in and is introduced by Lasso. Lasso has developed or is creating an in-home machine to recycle those usable items to promote closed-loop recycling. This Closed-loop recycling is the process by which a product or material can be used and then turned into an entirely new product or back to raw material indefinitely without losing its properties during the process.
The above unit would be installed in your kitchen, mudroom, or possibly other portions of your house. Here it would remain as it anxiously awaits your input of plastics (HDPE and PET), glass (transparent, green, and brown), and metals (aluminum and steel). Internal sensors, cameras, and AI learning ensure the machine recycles all that can be recycled. Those items not accepted would then be rejected from the device.
I had a question: How clean do these items have to be before placing them into this machine? The answer was simple; they have a steam cleaning process built into the device, which uses less power than a typical dishwasher. This process removes 100% of the contaminants making the process a no-brainer. To enable the cleaning process, you would need to place the machine near a water source hookup.
The Lasso Loop will grind, shred and crush the recyclables reducing them to a fraction of their original size while maintaining their purity throughout. The pessimist in me immediately went to “How loud will this thing be?” Lasso immediately answered with, “no louder than your washing machine at its loudest.” They state 74db is the loudest this machine will be during its most challenging tasks. Most vacuum cleaners are in the 70db range of noise to give you some comparison.
As your machine collects the processed materials in the sealed, sterile, and, more importantly, odor-free bottom chamber, the data is contained within the application in real-time. An example of the data collected is seen below.
The collection of the processed materials is estimated to be only 3 to 8 times a year. The phone application will alert you to available collection times, and you need only to remove the bottom storage container and place it at your curb for pick-up.
Additional Features/Benefits/Facts
This item is available in several colors to match your color scheme. It can be pre-ordered here at a reduced cost known as the LAUNCH EDITION. The standard price of $5000 was reduced to $3999, and there is no advertised date of release, which tells me they are still working on this.
The storage bin has seven compartments. For those states that have bottle deposits, these are tallied within the application and credited back to the customer. Pick up of all processed materials is inclusive of the price of the Lasso Loop.
The phone application will provide valuable data when purchasing items at a store. With a simple bar code scan, the application will alert you to any item’s recyclability before purchase.
Lasso states these recyclables have value, and within five years of ownership of the Lasso Loop, you could start to see some cash returns based on your consumption. There is no telling if and when this may happen, but I am guessing the real sell here is reducing our carbon footprint and cutting down on the waste in these awful landfills.
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