I find it incredible that we can track a package across the world, but often lose track of its materials once a product reaches the end of its life.
AI could change that.
By combining product data, sensors, computer vision, and material databases, new systems are making it possible to identify what products are made of and where those materials could go next.
For the circular economy, this could be a major shift. Instead of treating every discarded product as an unknown mix of materials, we could start seeing it as a collection of identifiable resources with a traceable history.
What excites me most is the possibility of giving materials something they have never really had before: a digital identity that follows them beyond the first life of a product.