SortBot: Forbes.com reports that a company in Finland, ZenRobotics, is developing a robot capable of separating recyclables from garbage. It still has a ways to go, but it sounds like they´re headed in the right direction:

"The robot uses complex and multiple sets of sensors in order to do this. For example, it uses cameras to detect normal light, as well as spectrometers. It also uses 3-D scanning, haptic feedback, and metal detectors. The company’s goal is to develop a robot that uses this variety of sensing technology in order to appropriately separate the good stuff from the bad stuff -- and so far, its first field test has been a success. The company’s robots were set up at a construction site and correctly identified 50% of the recyclable material.

"That’s far from perfect. But in the U.S., construction waste accounts for 50% of all landfill material, according to the Construction Materials Recycling Association. Recycling just a fraction of that would mean big savings in resources, as well as landfill fees."

Someone´s Gotta Doo It: It´s been a while since I´ve come across a decent pet-poop-picker-upper story. Here´s a pretty good one, from the Visalia [Calif.] Times-Delta.

For those with a good sense of humor and a high threshold for l´odeur de you-know-what, this fellow actually almost makes it sound like pretty fun gig.

I don´t know, though. That may be too much of a stretch. Maybe someone should start developing a robot for this grubby job, too.

Pete Fehrenbach is managing editor of Waste & Recycling News. Past installments of this column are collected in the Inbox archive.