By CINDY BISHOP

cindy.bishop@gaflnews.com

With STAFF REPORTS

CORDELE — Last year, a Bibb County recycling company brought new life – and jobs – to the failed Crisp County Solid Waste facility when owner Phillip Davis of Macon opened Recycle U.S.A. Inc.

Now, Davis has found a way to bring even more profit and additional job opportunities to this area.

He has joined forces with the owners of Davis Oil Company in Perry to create U.S. Ethanol, a company that will recycle soft drinks, juices and other bottled beverages into ethanol, a cleaner-burning gasoline additive. The new product will be made at the facility near Arabi.

Out-dated beverages will be shipped to Recycle U.S.A. where the plastic bottles will be cleaned, sterilized and ground into small pieces, then later can be recycled into carpeting, roofing materials and more.

The contents inside the bottles, which until now were thrown away, will be generated into the new product. Davis Oil will sell the ethanol-gasoline mix at stations throughout middle Georgia and also will market it across the southeast.

Hopes are that the new company will have an annual production of 4-6 million gallons of ethanol. That production may have the potential to increase over a period of time.

Davis Oil already has signed a contract and has committed to sell as much ethanol as the plant can make.

Right now, 40 employees work at Recycle U.S.A. and once the new company starts, an additional 40 jobs are expected to be created.