alt Hacker NewsThat's why plastic bags are so cheap -- ethanol is a byproduct, but you earn more if you discard it and sell only oil.
But the burned up ethanol would be perfectly suitable for products.
Nowadays there are some regulations to prevent that, so they may sell up ethanol at negative prices sometimes.
UPDATE: Ethene, not ethanol.
You wrote ethanol (C₂H₆O), but do you mean ethylene/ethene (C₂H₄)? Polyethylene (PE) is a very common plastic, such as HDPE, LDPE, PET.