AI exposure: Recycling and Reclamation Workers
Prepare and sort materials or products for recycling. Identify and remove hazardous substances. Dismantle components of products such as appliances.
Reading this score
computedAt 8.7% of weighted task load, Recycling and Reclamation Workers sits at the 11th percentile, below the point where a job's centre of gravity has moved. 87.1% of what this role does is untouched, meaning current systems cannot produce that work at all, whatever the commercial incentive.
What holds the line here is embodiment. Across this occupation's 14 tasks it averages 2.86 out of 3, the highest of the five friction dimensions. In plain terms, the work has to happen in physical space. A language model cannot move matter. Until the robotics to do this work is both good enough and cheap enough to deploy widely, capability in software does not reach it.
The most exposed thing this job does is Record logs of recycled materials or waste chemicals removed from products, at 73.3%. The least is Collect recyclable materials from curbside for delivery to designated facilities, at 0.0%. A gap of 73.3% between two parts of the same job is the reason this index publishes at task level. An occupation-wide number would have hidden both.
Within transportation and material moving occupations, this one is less exposed than the median of 24.3% across the group's 52 roles, with 46 scoring higher. Being in an exposed family does not make a particular job exposed, and the reverse holds too.
What would move this score. Of 14 tasks, 1 are currently banded exposed, 0 assisted and 13 untouched. For that distribution to shift materially would take robotics cheap and reliable enough to deploy at scale, not a better language model. The score is re-computed every quarter against a fresh capability reference, and the change is published rather than quietly applied.
Where the score comes from
judgedEvery task is scored through the standardised work activities it maps to. These are this occupation’s averages on the six rubric dimensions. Capability is what AI can do; the other five are what stands in the way.
| Dimension | Mean | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Capability | 0.57 | 0-4 |
| Embodiment | 2.86 | 0-3 |
| Presence | 0.20 | 0-3 |
| Accountability | 0.40 | 0-3 |
| Context | 0.67 | 0-3 |
| Verification cost | 0.54 | 0-3 |
Task by task
14 tasks, O*NET 31.0| Task | Exposed | Assisted | Untouched | Importance | Band |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record logs of recycled materials or waste chemicals removed from products. | 73.3% | 26.7% | 0.0% | 3.90 | exposed |
| Operate balers to compress recyclable materials into bundles or bales. | 18.3% | 6.7% | 75.0% | 4.09 | untouched |
| Operate automated refuse or manual recycling collection vehicles. | 18.3% | 6.7% | 75.0% | 3.58 | untouched |
| Operate processing equipment, such as fiber-sorters and grinders, to sort, crush, or grind recyclable materials. | 16.7% | 8.3% | 75.0% | 3.81 | untouched |
| 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. | 13.3% | 11.7% | 75.0% | 4.01 | untouched |
| Sort materials, such as metals, glass, wood, paper or plastics, into appropriate containers for recycling. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.26 | untouched |
| Clean recycling yard by sweeping, raking, picking up broken glass and loose paper debris, or moving barrels and bins. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.13 | untouched |
| Sort metals to separate high-grade metals, such as copper, brass, and aluminum, for recycling. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.97 | untouched |
| Clean, inspect, or lubricate recyclable collection equipment or perform routine maintenance or minor repairs on recycling equipment, such as star gears, finger sorters, destoners, belts, and grinders. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.79 | untouched |
| Collect and sort recyclable construction materials, such as concrete, drywall, plastics, or wood, into containers. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.30 | untouched |
| Extract chemicals from discarded appliances, such as air conditioners or refrigerators, using specialized machinery, such as refrigerant recovery equipment. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.23 | untouched |
| Deposit recoverable materials into chutes or place materials on conveyor belts. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.16 | untouched |
| Clean materials, such as metals, according to recycling requirements. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 4.03 | untouched |
| Collect recyclable materials from curbside for delivery to designated facilities. | 0.0% | 0.0% | 100.0% | 3.64 | untouched |
Task text and importance ratings sourced from O*NET 31.0. Shares computed. The occupation score is the importance-weighted mean.
Occupations either side of this one
The four closest scores in the same occupational family, then the four closest anywhere in the index.
Read this carefully. Exposure is not displacement. A high score means current AI systems can produce this work, not that anyone will stop paying a person to do it. Adoption depends on economics, regulation and inertia that this index deliberately does not model. How the score is built.
What this means in practice
Most of this work is not reachable by current systems, so the immediate pressure is on the administrative edges of the role rather than its core: the scheduling, the reporting, the written records. That is where time is recovered.