By bizn_fun 
Mr Root told BBC Essex’s Sonia Watson that microplastics had become one of the “biggest pollution sources on the planet”.
“I was looking at how we solve that and started developing solutions,” said the inventor, who built the prototype after leaving his engineering job eight years ago.
He said creating Regen – his self-cleaning, reusable product – was “challenging” and was the result of four years of work in a laboratory.
“I was also working off my mother-in-law’s dining table for about nine months,” recalled Mr Root, whose head office is now in Bristol.
“I then upgraded to working out of a stable for a little while in the rural parts of Essex, and eventually made it ‘big time’ and got a unit on a turkey farm.”