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UpCircle – Digitizing the waste industry

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Project data

  • Project no: GRS-005/24 
  • Amount of funding: CHF 150'000 
  • Approved: 24.04.2024 
  • Duration: 06.2024 - 05.2025 
  • Area of activity:  InnoBooster, seit 2018

Project management

Project description

At UpCircle, we are tackling the 1.3 trillion USD waste management industry with advanced computer vision and AI solutions. Particularly, recycling processors have limited knowledge about the material feedstock that enters their plant. This creates both ecological and economic loss during processing, as the plants are not operating at optimal efficiency. UpCircle has developed a method to analyze and quantify the infeed material of a waste processor and provides valuable insights to boost their efficiency.

Status/Results

Our method was developed at ETH Zurich and is tested and validated with pilots in the waste industry. The execution of these pilots has resulted in founding of the UpCircle startup. However, the solution is currently at prototype state and needs to be elevated to product level. Thus, the main goal of this project is to boost the market entry of our solution. Within the next months, we aim to turn our prototype into a scalable product and simultaneously sharpen the value proposition together with industry experts and pilot partners.

Links

Persons involved in the project

Hendrik Kolvenbach e-mail at ETH, e-mail at UpCircle, CEO UpCircle, Senior Scientist at ETH
Adrian Ensmenger e-mail at ETH, e-mail at UpCircle, COO UpCircle, ARC Project Lead at ETH

Last update to this project presentation  19.08.2024