PieFed chez MarudScientists in Japan develop plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours
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www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/sโฆ
www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/sโฆ
Nice!
Deleted by author
Looks like it's not an issue fortunately.
Yeah I reacted to the title and then read the article and edited lol
Given the username, the immediate emotional reaction when expecting damage to ocean life is understandable
Unironically, I am passionate about marine environmentalism lol
Same here buddy! I try to limit plastic use as much as possible, or reuse any plastic items I already have as much as I can to reduce consumption
So using this for frozen foods, or takeaway containers isnโt advised. Those are basically all sodium.
It dissolves...but into what? Sounds like a recipe for a petroleum salt water mix that's probably just as toxic as melted plastic, unless all the petroleum is removed.
It doesnโt seem to be based on petroleum, since theyโre explicitly comparing it to petroleum-based plasticsโฆ
There also are other non-petroleum based plastics that dissolve in water. This part is not new. E.g. polyvinyl alcohol is used widely.
Whatโs new about this one is that it specifically needs salt to dissolve and they claim itโs otherwise relatively sturdy. So maybe it could be used instead of pet bottles for drinks? Or maybe theyโre not quite there yet but itโs a new step in that directionโฆ
There's a lot of sodium in most fizzy drinks, wonder if that rules them out for this. Or does it have to be sodium chloride specifically?
Without checking out the details, I can say with fairly high confidence that a material that will be degraded by a sodium chloride solution will most likely also be degraded by other electrolytes as well.
However, the electrolyte-concentration in drinks is much, much lower than that in seawater. And if it can't be used for electrolyte-containing drinks, it could be used for water bottles.
Maybe we could use this stuff for umbrellas too? My major concern is what this new material is broken down into.
Not in the winter, lol.
Instant micro plastics: just add seawater!
It's a bit of a stretch calling it a plastic, as it's not petroleum based from what I've read.
Is that necessary for plastic? The name comes from the Greek for "to mould". For me, anything that makes long chain mouldable polymers is a plastic. Milk makes Casein or Galalith plastic, PLA is commonly made of corn. There's a ton of bamboo fabrics that are essentially nylon made from cellulose.
This sounds borderline miraculous, and I have a feeling there's bound to be a catch. I hope not, but I'm just too cynical.
The catch would be the reactor. An EVA type of plastic reactor can output more than 12 tons per hour these days.
It dissolves with salt. Our sweat will melt it
Will that make it easier for our bodies to absorb it?
Ah, of course. Although, they did mention coatings to protect the material, but it does sound like it will be more fragile than existing plastic.
The catch is that itโs useless in most plastics applications, where you really donโt want it to dissolve easily. Probably more catches, but thatโs the one I see right away.
Also probably gonna turn out it dissolves into smaller plastics, perfectly sized for penetrating the blood-brain-barrier.
If you read the article, you'll find that they claim it's broken down into something which is processed by naturally occurring bacteria. I would have preferred that they linked to an actual research article for details, but this is explicitly not one of these "degradable" plastics that just dissolves into microplastic.
Did you guys even read the article?
It just accelerated the microplastic pipeline.
The perfect material for Teslaโs new cyberboat
I have a name for that boat: Cybersunk
Thats very fitting, I would also accept CyberD (cyber dissolved)
I think that's a mod for CP2077...
It is also a short for cyberDick, in honor of their CEO.
Titan 2.0!... But because we don't know this materials strengths yet, we'll add a supportive Styrofoam coating. A generous one.
Perfect since he's being invited to Russia now. They can share their know-how of sinking ships.
I think some of y'all are missing a lot of packaging use cases other than food. But even in the food sector, there are dry things like pasta, beans, and rice that don't have salt in them. If it really is as strong as a petroleum plastic for these items, it could eliminate tons of micro plastic.
I've seen rice sold just in the cardboard box already.
If this means that it does not break down when exposed to just water, that's a pretty big deal. Water solubility has been the major issue making biodegradable plastics useless for food packaging (typically you want to either keep the food wet and water in, or dry and water out - either way water permeability is a problem).
Of course most foods also contain salt, so... I guess that's why the article talks about coatings. If the material has to be coated to keep it from breaking down too fast, what is the point? either the coating will prevent it from breaking down, or it just moves the problem to the coating not breaking down.
Food is not the only thing that gets packaged. The worst example that comes to my mind is the way they package microSD cards.
Food is a reasonable target for biodegradable packaging because you don't really expect the food to sit around for more than a year (for long-term food packaging you just wouldn't use a biodegradable material).
Packaging products that might have a long shelf life is more problematic. If the material breaks down in saltwater then it will start breaking down if someone picks it up with sweaty or recently washed hands.
Or probably in shipping containers. I assume the salty air on cargo ships would be an issue depending how the bulk of the product is stored while in transit
What, you don't think 1cmยฒ of product should be packaged in a 7ร10 cm doubled-up plastic sheet?
It's cool we'll just slap some PFAS on there and fix 'er right up
Plastic coated cardboard containers exist already, and are being widely used for food.
Well right, and coating them with plastic means that they leave plastic residue behind if they break down in an uncontrolled environment, and increases the cost and complexity of recycling:
https://www.almostzerowaste.com/non-recyclable-paper/
Yes they already exist. They are not really better than pure plastic, they're kind of a form of greenwashing because they appear to be environmentally friendly.
That's my impression, since all the "environmentally aware" companies use them.
Presumably you could only coat certain faces of the material (like ones touching food). Or maybe the coating could degrade in another more time-known fashion. So if the coating would be expected to last no more then 3 years then after the plastic could start to degrade.
And are we gonna start using this on a mainstream scale?
We use plenty of biodegradable plastics. Theyโre not always the correct solution. You wouldnโt want an airplane biodegrading, for example.
Iโd love that actually. While Iโm flying preferably
chorus NO !
Ok, back to non~biodegradable plastics and fuck this innovation
Coated with what? If you say PFAS, this is worse than microplastics.
They developed plastic that desolves in seawater in hours. Well if it were that easy they should have started developing that a bit sooner and we wouldnt be in this mess.
Letโs build a ship out of it.
Or we can, you know, have waxed paper?
Also, I thought we've already mainstreamed starch-based plastics.
Last but not least, we've had cellophane pretty much since the industrial revoltion. The current issue has been the productionlike containing toxic materials, but the end product itself is biodegradable. Perhaps we can improve on that.
I hope they can tune it to react only to a very specific type of salt water range or else it will not be applicable very often.
And I love this. More if this please
You see the thing is, the point of plastic is that it doesnโt dissolve easily. I can see this having some niche applications, but this wonโt be replacing most plastics any time soon.
Its specifically sensitive to salt, so you can use it for anything with little or no salt without issue. Also it would be perfect for basically all packaging applications that dont involve food but do require an airtight seal. So you could probably replace the majority of all single use plastic packaging/containers with it.
To be fair, this was originally the point of plastic. The primary point of plastic today is that it is an extremely cheap material that you can mould into pretty much any shape.
Need a bag to carry stuff? Plastic.
Packaging for toothpicks? Plastic.
Packaging for clothes? Plastic.
Fake plant. Plastic.
Part of the problem is that we're using a wonder-material that lasts forever (plastic) for a bunch of mundane shit where we don't need it, because that wonder-material turns out to be the cheapest material around as well.
Well letโs stop putting plastic into seawater and we wonโt have to worry about it dissolving.
Ah but imagine the eager faces of Logitech's execs when they realize they could make their mice dissolve under your fingers and offer a subscription for replacements.
So then what can it be used for, other than being decomposed? Doesn't almost all food contain salt, and human sweat as well? It's not really useful on earth then, is it? Maybe for unmanned spacecrafts?
Well, the dream material would be some that is stable during use and then immediately falls apart when disposed. But that's not how things usually work, so anything that decomposes fairly quickly cannot be used to store food for example, as it would just mix with the food. And anything that is stable enough to store food does not decompose in a hundred years or so.
Product packaging for non-foods
Sounds great for non-food packages, such as small electronics, toys, etc. Anything that currently comes in a blister pack.
Depends on how much the salt content in the air at coastal places affect it. But if it doesn't that much, then sure, sounds good. Of course, also the intermediate products of decomposition should be nontoxic in that case.
I guess that's part of the reason they're exploring coatings - something to slow down the degradation during regular usage.
Then you can just used coated cardboard
Good, good, there aren't enough microplastics in the sea, must dissolve more.
huh. happy to know we'll never hear from this again! thanks capitalism!