Once a garbage truck collects a bag of household trash, most people never think about it again.

In Hampton Roads, regional leaders are thinking about where that trash will go more than 30 years from now.

Inside an unassuming Portsmouth facility, Denver-based AMP is using artificial intelligence to recover valuable materials directly from ordinary municipal trash, not recycling collected separately at the curb. According to Andrew Trump, general manager of AMP’s Portsmouth facility, it is the only operation in the world currently doing this at scale.

“That is the big story here,” Trump said. “It is not happening anywhere else in the world.”

The technology combines conveyor belts, cameras, artificial intelligence and precisely controlled air jets. As trash moves through the facility, the system identifies recyclable materials and directs them onto a separate conveyor. The goal is to recover materials that would otherwise be buried in a landfill.

But the technology is only part of the story.

The facility exists because the Southeastern Public Service Authority, or SPSA, began confronting a problem decades before it was expected to become an emergency.

SPSA manages waste for eight Hampton Roads cities and counties representing approximately 1.2 million residents. Its Suffolk landfill has limited room for expansion and was projected to reach capacity around 2060.

For an elected official working within a two-year or four-year term, 2060 can feel distant. For a regional waste authority responsible for maintaining critical infrastructure, it is an approaching deadline.

SPSA decided not to wait.

“SPSA was thinking long term,” Trump said. “They were able to say, ‘2060, that’s a problem. We need to figure out how to make 2060 into 2095.’”

That forward thinking led to a 20-year agreement with AMP. The company is expected to process approximately 500,000 tons of the region’s waste annually and divert at least 50% of it from the landfill.

The Portsmouth facility is the first phase of the project. A significantly larger operation is planned for the former Wheelabrator property on Victory Boulevard. Together, the facilities are intended to preserve landfill capacity while recovering recyclable and organic materials that previously would have been buried.

AMP originally built its business by selling individual sorting robots to waste companies. It later expanded into building and operating complete facilities. The Portsmouth operation reflects that evolution.

“The whole thing is a robot,” Trump said.

Its artificial intelligence can also adapt as the waste stream changes. If new materials become valuable or new markets emerge, AMP can adjust what the system identifies and recovers without rebuilding the entire facility. That flexibility is critical for infrastructure expected to remain in operation for decades.

The result is a one-of-one facility that demonstrates what innovation can look like when a region is willing to solve tomorrow’s problems today.