The recycling industry is suffering from high costs and low efficiency. Danu Robotics has challenged this with its new robot.
See our guide to this year’s hottest new businesses and most exceptional founders in the complete 2026 Startups 100 index.
Founder: Xiaoyan Ma
Year founded: 2020
Website: danurobotics.com
Committed environmentalist, Xiaoyan Ma, decided to put her background in AI to good use and tackle what she saw was a well-meaning but floundering industry – recycling.
As the Edinburgh-based entrepreneur shares, “despite being a multi-billion-pound global industry, the majority of waste sorting was still being done manually – dirty, dangerous, and inefficient work with high costs and low output quality.”
That output quality naturally equates to a horrendous carbon impact. “Globally, we generate over three billion tonnes of waste each year, yet less than 10% is recycled,” she adds.
Globally, we generate over three billion tonnes of waste each year, yet less than 10% is recycled,
Key to this is the fact that most facilities still rely on manual labour. It is hazardous work so staff turnover is high, costs are rising and contamination rates can be as much as 50%, which means fines for companies. It also means that “recyclables lose value, require costly secondary sorting, or end up in landfill or incineration,” Ma explains.
Even among waste operators who had deployed robots, many had decommissioned them because they weren’t fit for purpose. Ma decided that, instead of one large robotic arm, she would create a team-based, multi-arm system. “This could work more like a group of human pickers – but faster, more precise, and at a fraction of the cost,” she says.
Our vision is that every major recycling facility will view multi-arm, AI-powered robotics as the industry standard, with Danu Robotics at the forefront,
This is H.E.R.O, Danu Robotics’ flagship product, an AI-powered robotic system designed for sorting mixed recyclable waste in industrial facilities. It uses advanced computer vision and machine learning to identify, sort, and separate materials with high precision and speed.
She admits she faced scepticism but developed a working prototype quickly and launched trials with forward-looking partners such as Glasgow City Council. This produced the performance data needed to then take part in accelerators like SOSV HAX and Morgan Stanley’s Inclusive Ventures Lab.
Danu Robotics now has some of the world’s largest waste management companies as customers. Collaborations are also taking place with Glasgow and Dundee city councils.
Ma and her team believe their system could be deployed across the world in the next five years. “Our vision is that every major recycling facility will view multi-arm, AI-powered robotics as the industry standard, with Danu Robotics at the forefront,” she says.
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