information:extraction
Environmental issues

The widespread usage of polyethylene poses potential difficulties for waste management because it is not readily biodegradable.

In Japan, getting rid of plastics in an environmentally friendly way was the major problem discussed until the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 became a larger issue. It was listed as a US$90 billion market for solutions. Since 2008, Japan has rapidly increased the recycling of plastics, but still has a large amount of plastic wrapping which goes to waste.

In 2010, a Japanese researcher, Akinori Ito, released the prototype of a machine which creates oil from polyethylene using a small, self-contained vapor distillation process.