Molecular encoding of recycling information
AssigneeMicrosoft Technology Licensing, LLC
InventorsYuan-Jyue Chen, Bichlien Hoang Nguyen, Jake Allen Smith, Karin Strauss, Ranveer Chandra
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Recycling information is associated with objects through the use of molecular tags. The recycling information may describe the type of material that the object is made from as well as provide instructions for recycling. The molecular tags may be polynucleotides or other types of molecules including inorganic molecules. The molecular tags may be embedded within the object or attached to the surface of the object. At the end of the object's life, the molecular tags are read and the recycling information is used to appropriately recycle the object.
Claims20
A method of recycling a plastic object, the method comprising:
- creating the plastic object with first molecular tags embedded throughout the plastic object;
- obtaining a one of the first molecular tags from a portion of the plastic object;
- reading recycling information from the one of the first molecular tags;
- and
- recycling the plastic object according to the recycling information, wherein recycling the plastic object comprises:
- making recycled plastic granules from the plastic object;
- combining the recycled plastic granules with virgin plastic granules, wherein the virgin plastic granules have second molecular tags embedded throughout and the second molecular tags encode different information than the first molecular tags;
- and
- creating a recycled plastic object from the recycled plastic granules and the virgin plastic granules, the recycled plastic object having the first molecular tags and the second molecular tags embedded throughout.
A method of recycling an object, the method comprising:
- reading recycling information from a molecular tag associated with the object;
- recycling the object according to the recycling information;
- exposing the object to an environmental condition during recycling that changes a detectable characteristic of the molecular tag;
- creating a recycled object from at least a portion of the object;
- and
- identifying the detectable characteristic of the molecular tag thereby determining that material in the recycled object was exposed to the environmental condition during recycling.
An object comprising a molecular tag encoding recycling information, wherein the recycling information comprises a technique for recycling the object, a type of material used to create the object, a number of times the object has been recycled, or an identifier of a facility that created the object or previously recycled the object.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.