Akron company says it's solved the recycling of plastic and rubber trash

AKRON -- Just think of how much plastic we throw away or even recycle every day. The bottles, bags, and packaging. Now imagine every bit of it mixed together and turned into a product that reduces our dependence on oil.

An Akron company claims to be doing just that. Joe Hensel of the Polyflow Corporation says he has an answer for the recycling, waste, and chemical industries.

"The heart of the technology is the Polyflow process," says Henkel of the method of combining all kinds of waste from tires to styrofoam to carpets and turning them into a new raw material.

"Things like this, that are dirty or covered with food stuffs that most folks will tell you is not recycleable, we can put through the process," says Hensel as he displays some of the materials he reprocesses.

The end product is a liquid monomer used in the making of all rubber and plastic products. "We are making a feedstock for the polymer industry," says Hensel, "the cream of the crude oil."

Hensel predicts that up to a 7% reduction in dependence on oil could be achieved if all waste plastic and rubber was put through his Polyflow process and turned into the useful monomer because "7% of all the crude oil and natural gas we use in this country ends up in plastics or rubber."

The folks at Polyflow say they could save the average city $10 million a year if all their plastic and rubber waste is recycled and turned into that new raw material.