Rice into low-carbon plastic: bringing hope to a struggling Fukushima town

FILE PHOTO: Takemitsu Iwazu, President of Biomass Resin Fukushima shows plastic pellets, that are being produced in a factory line, during an interview with Reuters at its factory in Namie, about 7 km from the crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant, Fukushima Prefecture, Japan February 28, 2023. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon

NAMIE, Japan (Reuters) - Jinichi Abe grins as he watches diggers working earth near his rice fields, knowing they are returning still more fields to productivity after Fukushima nuclear reactors exploded and sprayed the area with radiation over a decade ago.

Even better, Abe knows the rice that he and a cooperative grow will have a steady buyer, and his town of Namie, still struggling to recover from the March 2011 disaster, has a new hope: a venture that turns rice unsellable for consumption due to health worries into low-carbon plastic used by major firms across Japan.