Converting Plastic Back Into Oil? A New Green Technology on the Horizon

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Green technologies are growing, and some of them are unbelievable.

I'm sure you've heard the buzz about how green jobs are a growing field and that the majority of new job growth in the coming decade will be in the fields of healthcare and green technology. It still remains to be seen what types of green jobs will be created here in America, but one company has come up with a new way to recycle that's actually pretty exciting.

A new recycling plant just opened in Akron, Ohio that doesn't just recycle plastic and turn it into new plastic like a traditional recycling facility would. What it does is actually take the plastic and make oil from it. The company is planning to take old plastics, bottles from landfills, broken plastic hangers from clothing stores and use them to make almost 80,000 barrels a year.

Exciting, huh? Just think about it. The two biggest environmental issues we face in this country, discarded plastics that aren't biodegradable and an oil shortage are solved by this type of recycling.

Making plastic out of oil is extremely common, and manufacturing plants across the country do it on a daily basis. It completely blows my mind to think that the reverse is also possible and that all of our old plastic stuff can be turned into oil and gas.

The company, Vadxx Energy has built a new facility in Akron using recycled, environmentally friendly materials. They have perfected the process of manufacturing synthetic crude oil and natural gas using petroleum based plastics. The process they use is called thermal depolymerization. It's amazing that they are able to use all sorts of materials to create the oil and natural gas. This means things like auto fluff, old tires, non recyclable plastics, waste oils, bottom oils from refineries and even old computer parts. If it has oil in it, Vadaxx can get the oil back out.

This company is one of the first commercial-scale recycling of this type. The challenge is still how to get the plastics. Currently, there are a few cities across the country that are able to separate the plastic waste from landfills, but with the increased demand for the plastic waste, more companies will have a reason to find ways to get the usable materials out of the landfills.

It's exciting to see how companies with a greener approach are able to think outside of the box in order to come up with new ideas. Those new ideas can catch on and end up spawning new and vibrant industries, making the world, and their pockets, a little bit greener.

What do you think about this type of recycling? Do you think that it will catch on? I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

By Melissa Kennedy- Melissa is a 9 year blog veteran and a freelance writer for ManufacturingWorkersBlog. Along with helping others find the job of their dreams, she enjoys computer geekery, raising a teenager, supporting her local library, writing about herself in the third person and working on her next novel.