HIGH POINT COMPANY TURNS WASTE PLASTIC INTO DIESEL FUEL

From old computers through scrapped cars to post-consumer carpets, an awful lot of plastic-based waste ends up in landfill because it is too difficult, or too expensive, to recycle. Clean Blue Technologies, a High Point based technology start up is hoping to change all that, turning waste plastics into commercial grade diesel fuel, syngas and carbon black. Founder John Blair explains more on the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter website:

Clean Blue works with the less desirable and unable-to-be-reused higher numbered plastics, which typically wind up in landfills. Larger companies already contract with municipalities to take the more popular recyclable plastics; Blair said Clean Blue is happy to only take the other plastics because it wants to stay manageable initially. He hopes the first plant could be operating somewhere in North Carolina in 2014.

Currently based in Biotech Place at the Wake Forest Innovation Quarter, the company is in talks with municipalities to set up a series of plants that will deal with these harder-to-recycle plastics.