When we finished installing our very first recycling robot, our founders Rebecca Hu-Thrams and Areeb Malik worked 20 hours straight through the weekend to get it running.

When it finally came online, they grabbed a Sharpie and wrote Areeb’s cell phone number on the side — right above it, they scrawled:
“Glacier Tech Support.”

Today, that same line of robots — now with a full engineering, operations, and support team behind them — is achieving this amazing recognition from TIME.

It’s surreal to see something we once built by hand in a Craigslist-rented attic now helping process the waste of nearly 1 in 10 American households, identifying over 70 categories of materials at industrial scale.

We’re proud of how far we’ve come and deeply aware of how far we still have to go to make recycling work the way we know it can.

Here’s to everyone who’s been part of this journey: MRF operators, brand partners, engineers, and believers who helped make this invention real.

Curious about Glacier? Looking to scope out a robot for your MRF, get better waste stream data for your brand, or even build alongside us? Talk to us!