Fastsort-Textile: Revolutionizing Textile Recycling

0:00It's April 2, I'm Cory with the story. This is Global News, driven by AI and Bill for a global audience. In Jean-Dragon, China, an AI-powered machine called FastSort Textile is changing the game for recycling used clothes. This be source textiles by material composition at lightning speed, earning a spot on Time Magazine's Best Inventions list for 2025. Built by Data Beyond, a company started back in 2018. It tackles synthetic fabrics that dominate the industry. The machine cranks through two tons of clothes per hour, handling 100 kilograms in just two to three minutes. That's a far cry from one worker taking four hours for the same job, often with mistakes. Workers feed piles onto conveyor belts, and the scanner reads each item's makeup in under one second, spitting out results on a live feed. Facility managers rave about the savings on labor and time, since human struggle to nail exact polyester blends like 80 or 90%.

1:00Accuracy is spot on, slashing unicyclable waste headed for landfills or incinerators from 50% down to 30%. Synthetic textiles, pulled from fossil fuels, make up 70% of global production and pollute big time. China leads exports at $142 billion, way ahead of everyone else, fueling the waste crisis. With machines outpacing human limits, the push is toward dark factories running 24-7 on robots, maximizing recycling and easing the planet's textile burden.