Spore wants to find out if this AI solution works and gain insight into the level of food contamination at festivals. At Mysteryland, they tested sensors in crew catering waste bins and collected more than 20,000 images. These images will be used to train their AI models to detect contaminants in waste streams. Hopefully this technology can help festivals reduce their waste costs by composting organic waste on site.

Guy Vincent, co-founder of Spore: “Our focus was on identifying plastic in crew catering waste bins. The test showed that we need autofocus cameras to improve photo quality. Despite problems with waste segregation in crew catering, we were able to retrieve valuable data. It is our intention to support large waste companies in their AI developments, making them less dependent on internal system development. We are also exploring the possibility of an open-source model and automating waste audits through our AI-equipped cameras. Current manual and irregular waste audits can benefit