The industry ministry is supporting the development of a new plastic material that naturally decomposes in the sea as marine environmental pollution becomes ever more serious.

The move is part of efforts to achieve the government＊s goal of stopping the generation of marine plastic waste by 2040.

In July, World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Japan pulled up a piece of plastic waste measuring 3 meters long and a meter wide in waters near Tatara Island, Nagasaki Prefecture. It took three months and ?500,000 ($3,385) to recover the waste, in which a large number of fishing nets and ropes were entangled.

As of 2015, about 9.1 million metric tons of plastic waste, equivalent to about 56,000 jet aircraft, had been released into the ocean annually worldwide.

Plastic waste is taken into organisms as particulate microplastics. It also has a significant impact on fisheries and tourism.

One estimate foresees the total weight of plastic waste in the ocean to exceed that of fish by 2050.

The industry ministry, through the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization, or NEDO, is supporting the development of biodegradable plastics that decompose into water and carbon dioxide by the action of microorganisms in the sea.

A five-year plan starting this fiscal year calls for the development of a new material that can be used for several years in water before it slowly decomposes over time.

Nisshinbo Chemical, which is supported by NEDO, has already established a technology to promote decomposition of a material with additives. Research is underway to improve its durability. The company aims to commercialize multiple types of material with different decomposition rates in the future.

The development is costly, but Japan＊s technological strength in biodegradable plastics is high, and demand is expected to be high if the country is able to introduce new materials ahead of the rest of the world, industry ministry officials said.