I'm genuinely curious as to which side of the equation you'd like to implement this solution - the consumer who throws the item away or the central sorting center that receives the items? Sure, a metro area sorting center might be interested, but many are government owned and require approval or even a referendum to increase the budget for this type of system. Rural sorting centers have no budget and the most high tech piece of equipment are the metal detectors positioned along conveyors (just before a couple scores of humans who do the actual sorting). You can give people an app to scan an item before they toss it, but that implies they'll actually use it. I want futuristic automated flying trash-sorting robots too, but I also don't think we've exhausted the easier options before jumping right into the high-cost tech solution.

Or you could just drop your junk in the trash and forego downloading, installing, learning, using, and ultimately wasting your life on an app.

I wouldn’t talk someone out of working on solving the waste stream problem.

Awesome links, thanks for sharing! I won’t call the technical problem “solved”, but the larger issue is the politics that people think recyclables have suffient value to self-sustain recycling operations, and that isn’t the case. You’re going to have to pay for both your trash and recyclables to be disposed of, you’ll just pay less for the recyclables.