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Two robotic sorters developed by EverestLabs have made a major impact at Universal Waste Systems Inc.’s material recovery facility (MRF) in Santa Fe Springs, California.
In fact, Facility Manager Gabe Rizo says the company is considering adding more.
“[The robots] require a very small amount of space to operate, which opens things up for us,” he says. “But it’s also the working relationship that we’ve developed with [EverestLabs] and the confidence that’s been instilled in us with them. … Everest is on our team.”
Universal Waste’s Santa Fe Springs MRF opened its doors in 2019 and processes 225–250 tons of residential and commercial material per day, five days per week. In 2022, the facility added a pair of EverestLabs sorters to its last-chance line, programming them to sort plastics such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) and polypropylene (PP).
The facility needed to consistently produce high-quality bales of PET suitable for buyers while also ramping up its efforts to pick out the growing amount of PP entering the system. According to Rizo, the robots have made a difference for both.
“Our PET output has probably increased another 10–15 percent since installing those robots,” he says. “And, it has allowed us to maintain a grade level with our finished product. Periodically, we run into contamination issues. By installing these robots where we installed them, it’s allowed us to reduce and basically eliminate that level of contamination in our other plastics.”
In addition to their ability to help Universal Waste’s MRF produce cleaner commodities, the robots designed by Fremont, California-based EverestLabs have provided other benefits, Rizo says. Notably, the 12-inch-by-12-inch pedestals the sorters are installed on allow for a small footprint—an important detail for a MRF operating in a tight, 20,000-square-foot space.
Also, Rizo points out the robots’ suction grippers that feature self-cleaning functionality, saving the MRF costly maintenance time and raising its level of efficiency.
Along with product performance, EverestLabs’ customer service has stood out to Rizo.
“They came out several times to see us, not really to sell to us, but to learn from us how we do what we do and how our system would benefit from their product,” he says. “They didn’t want to come in with big promises or grand ideas of changing our system. They want to just be an assistant to us. They spent time learning about us, learning how we do things and making sure they can live up to whatever their claims were with their product. To me, that was intriguing.”
As with the addition of any new equipment at a facility, there are bugs to work out before a system truly starts to hum. If an issue arose at the MRF, Rizo says EverestLabs was ready to help.
“They didn’t just try to troubleshoot over the phone,” he says. “They didn’t just put us with an IT guy or a chat system on their website. They sent techs down to us who would spend days, sometimes as long as a week, with us to make sure they were either getting bugs out or tuning the robots to get things dialed in so we would function properly.
“Their customer service has been outstanding. They fly their techs out and they spend as much time as needed to resolve whatever the issue is that might be happening.”
