Fantastic Plastic
Delaware Entrepreneurial Center-Based Company Uses Green Technology to Improve Roads
DELAWARE, Ohio – You might say this start-up company is helping to pave the way for green entrepreneurship.
And for its efforts, necoPlastics – headquartered at the Delaware Entrepreneurial Center at Ohio Wesleyan University – has been selected as a 2019 Cleantech Open company. Since 2005, the nonprofit Cleantech Open (CTO) program has been finding, funding, and fostering the most innovative clean technology companies in the world.
Steve Flaherty, founder and CEO of necoPlastics, said the company is “thrilled to be selected” as one of this year’s Cleantech Open participants.
“The CTO will allow us to continue our innovative mission and help establish necoPlastics as a modernizer in the plastic recycling industry,” said Flaherty, who also owns and operates Delaware-based Yumii Kettle Corn Company with his wife, Rachel.
He said necoPlastics is the sixth Ohio company in history selected for the Cleantech Open and the only Ohio business chosen this year.
Over the past 15 years, the CTO has trained more than 1,500 early stage clean technology entrepreneurs through its annual business accelerator. Collectively, these CTO alumni have gone on to raise $1.2 billion to develop their green technologies and to create more than 3,000 clean economy jobs.
Flaherty said necoPlastics is helping to improve roadways by using a patented technology that turns previously unrecyclable “junk” plastic into a fully recycled plastic aggregate that can be mixed with hot asphalt to increase the durability and longevity of the roadways.
necoPlastics began its five-month CTO experience earlier this summer. The program will conclude with a national summit and competition in November in Los Angeles, California. The Cleantech Open is a program of Community Partners, a 501(c)3 nonprofit public benefit organization. Learn more at www.cleantechopen.org.
Learn more about necoPlastics, LLC, and its necoPave product at www.necoplastics.com.
The Delaware Entrepreneurial Center at Ohio Wesleyan University, which opened in fall 2018, is a first-of-its-kind collaboration among Ohio Wesleyan University, Delaware County, and the City of Delaware creating a business accelerator and education center on the OWU campus.
Members of the entrepreneurial center have access to Ohio Wesleyan student-interns for assistance with product research, marketing strategies, budgeting, graphic design – and other needs to help them build their businesses. Learn more at www.owu.edu/delaware-entrepreneurial-center.