Will AI replace Recycling and Reclamation Workers?
AI reaches little of this job’s work.
2/100
Low exposure
More exposed to AI than 6% of US workers.
- AI already used in
- 0% of the work
- As AI tools mature: up to
- 4% of the work
What the job involves
Prepare and sort materials or products for recycling. Identify and remove hazardous substances. Dismantle components of products such as appliances.
Where AI reaches the work
The job’s main tasks, heaviest first, by how far AI reaches them.
Within reach(1)
- Record logs of recycled materials or waste chemicals removed from products.
Out of reach(13)
- Operate forklifts, pallet jacks, power lifts, or front-end loaders to load bales, bundles, or other heavy items onto trucks for shipping to smelters or other recycled materials processing facilities.
- Clean recycling yard by sweeping, raking, picking up broken glass and loose paper debris, or moving barrels and bins.
- Sort materials, such as metals, glass, wood, paper or plastics, into appropriate containers for recycling.
- Sort metals to separate high-grade metals, such as copper, brass, and aluminum, for recycling.
- Operate balers to compress recyclable materials into bundles or bales.
and 8 more
Also called
Sorter · Bobcat Driver · Box Sorter · Convenience Recycle Center Technician (Convenience Recycle Center Tech) · Deconstruction and Decontamination Waste Operations Specialist (D and D Waste Operations Specialist) · Non-Ferrous Material Handler · Sort Line Worker · Transfer Station Operator
Related jobs
What these numbers mean
The score is the share of this job’s work, weighted by how important and frequent each task is, that AI could do in half the time: tasks an AI model could do alone count in full, tasks that need software built on AI count half.
“AI already used” is the share of the work in tasks where people are recorded using AI today. “As AI tools mature” counts every task AI could halve, with or without extra software.
The percentile compares the score with every job’s, weighted by how many people in the US do each one. Exposure means AI could change how the work is done, not that the job goes away. These are estimates for the typical job, not predictions.
Sources
- O*NET 31.0 Database, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration
- GPTs are GPTs: Labor market impact potential of LLMs (task labels), Eloundou, Manning, Mishkin & Rock (2023), OpenAI and University of Pennsylvania
- Anthropic Economic Index: labor market impacts (task penetration), Anthropic
- Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (national and metropolitan areas), U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics