Alta Media Automates Recycling with ASUS NUC
What motivates recycling? For Alta Media, a sustainability-focused startup in Vietnam, the answer lies in a combination of convenience and community. That’s what led the company to create its “Recycle Depot.” This automated kiosk uses AI to sort and process plastic bottles and aluminum cans while engaging users through a points-based reward system that encourages community participation.
The company required flexible AI capabilities, efficient performance, compact hardware, and easy maintenance—all within a limited startup budget. ASUS NUC provided the ideal solution, delivering robust performance, sophisticated remote management, and a straightforward upgrade path while maintaining an energy- and cost-effective solution that supports the company’s growth and sustainability goals.
“ASUS NUC solution enables the Alta Media’s Recycle Depot system to operate stably, quickly recognize plastic bottles and empty cans using AI technology, optimize data processing performance, save energy, and ensure flexible connectivity for the collection and sorting process.”
—Tu Hoang, Director, Alta Media
Partnership Highlights
- Powerful yet compact ASUS NUC 12 Pro drives sophisticated AI recognition for accurately identifying and sorting PET bottles and aluminum cans
- Energy-efficient design aligns with Alta Media’s sustainability mission while keeping operational costs manageable
- Built-in remote management capabilities with ASUS IoT services enable monitoring of 41 machines across Vietnam
- Modular architecture provides an easy upgrade path as AI requirements evolve
- Compact form factor enables creative deployment options, including potential mobile variants
ASUS NUCs enable Alta Media’s Recycling Depot system to recognize and sort
The Challenge: Creating Efficient AI
As Vietnam embraces sustainable development, Alta Media identified an opportunity to transform recycling through technology. However, building an effective “reverse vending machine” presented several significant challenges:
- Accurate AI-driven Recognition: The system needed to reliably distinguish PET bottles and aluminum cans, even when the items were dirty or damaged.
- Compact and Efficient Hardware: Equipment had to be powerful enough to handle complex AI tasks within limited physical space.
- Cost and Energy Efficiency: Essential for a startup with ambitions to scale, requiring a sustainable balance between performance and operational costs.
- Remote Monitoring: Given their distributed network of kiosks, Alta Media needed reliable remote management capabilities.
- Easy Maintenance and Scalability: The solution required modularity for convenient upgrades and future enhancements in AI capabilities.
These challenges were particularly acute given Alta Media’s dual goals of environmental impact and business viability. Previous attempts at building recycling kiosks had suffered from inconsistent recognition, high power consumption, and maintenance difficulties that undermined user trust and operational efficiency.
The Solution: ASUS NUC Powers Intelligent Recycling
After evaluating various computing options, Alta Media selected the ASUS NUC as the core of their Recycle Depot system. This compact yet powerful device provided the ideal balance of performance, energy efficiency, and reliability needed to power their AI-driven recycling solution.
“We at Alta Media truly believe that this project represents a powerful synergy. By combining cutting-edge AI technology, the robust and efficient hardware platform provided by ASUS, and Alta’s core focus on sustainable development, we are actively contributing to building a smarter, more effective circular economy model here in Vietnam.”
—Tu Hoang, Director, Alta Media
Key features that led Alta Media to choose the ASUS NUC include:
- The ASUS NUC powers through AI-driven machine vision tasks at a budget-friendly price.
- Compact design simplifies integration and gives Alta Media the flexibility to explore mobile variants and other unique configurations.
- Excellent power efficiency not only keeps costs down but helps the company meet its sustainability goals.
- Built-in remote management capabilities and ASUS IoT services enables centralized monitoring and control of the entire fleet.
- A modular design makes it easy to replace parts or add a GPU card to scale up AI capabilities in the future.
The ASUS NUC processes video feeds from cameras that monitor the recycling slot, using AI algorithms to identify valid recyclables. Once verified, the system triggers mechanical components to sort and compact the items while awarding points to the user’s account through the connected app.
ASUS NUC 12 Pro powers AI-driven machine vision tasks despite its compact size
The Results: Technology Driving Sustainable Behavior
The partnership between Alta Media and ASUS has delivered tangible benefits for both the environment and Vietnamese communities. Powered by the ASUS NUC, the Recycle Depot system achieves highly reliable identification of recyclables, accurately recognizing a wide range of PET bottles and aluminum cans—even under challenging conditions. The system’s modular architecture ensures that future AI enhancements can be implemented without the need for complete hardware replacement, providing a clear path for long-term scalability.
Energy efficiency has been another critical success. The ASUS NUC’s low-power design aligns perfectly with Alta Media’s sustainability mission while reducing operational costs—a vital consideration for a growing startup. At the same time, flexible cloud connectivity has empowered the company’s small technical team to remotely monitor and manage the widely disbursed machines from a central location, quickly identifying and resolving issues before they affect the user experience.
The cost-effective yet capable hardware platform has supported Alta Media’s budget constraints while enabling steady expansion across Vietnam. Compared to earlier systems, integration and maintenance have been dramatically simplified, minimizing technical overhead and freeing resources to focus on growth initiatives. The NUC’s compact form factor has also opened the door to future mobile variants and deployment in previously impractical locations.
Alta Media’s approach has earned recognition and support from key organizations, including the Ho Chi Minh City Industrial Park Enterprises Association (HBA) and the City Export Processing Zones and Industrial Zones Authority (HEPZA), further validating their vision of using technology to promote sustainable behavior in industrial and community settings.
Alta Media’s Recycle Depot system encourages community engagement in recycling efforts via its credit system
A Sustainable Path to a Greener Future
The partnership between Alta Media and ASUS demonstrates how innovative technology can address environmental challenges while creating engaging user experiences. By leveraging the ASUS NUC’s powerful yet efficient computing capabilities, Alta Media has transformed traditional recycling into an interactive, rewarding process that encourages community participation and environmental awareness.
About Alta Media
Alta Media is a Vietnamese technology company focusing on sustainability and recycling solutions. Currently operating 41 Recycling Depots across Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, Alta Media is positioned for expansion throughout Vietnam, with a mission to create a more effective, engaging, and sustainable recycling model.
The Recycle Depot has a companion app that users can access through a QR code. After logging in, they insert bottles and cans into the designated slot. The AI system automatically identifies, sorts, and verifies each item. For every accepted item, points are credited to the user’s account, which can later be redeemed for rewards or donated to community initiatives.
