huh. happy to know we’ll never hear from this again! thanks capitalism!
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.
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 it’s useless in most plastics applications, where you really don’t want it to dissolve easily. Probably more catches, but that’s 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.
Article says it dissolves into components
Did you guys even read the article?
The catch would be the reactor. An EVA type of plastic reactor can output more than 12 tons per hour these days.
It just accelerated the microplastic pipeline.
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.
Yes, and flour comes in a paper bag. It doesn’t stop manufacturers from trying to protect their product from incidental moisture contact.
A company who already packs their product in plastic is going to have a much easier time switching to something like this than changing their whole packing line out for box packing machines.
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.
Let’s build a ship out of it.
“Oil tanker spills 60,000 tons of crude into the Pacific after hull biodegrades, more at 6”
And then tow it outside the environment.
I feel like soluble plastic can’t be a good thing actuallyEdit: the plastic chemically decomposes in water, it does not dissolve
Looks like it’s not an issue fortunately.
Aida said the new material is as strong as petroleum-based plastics but breaks down into its original components when exposed to salt. Those components can then be further processed by naturally occurring bacteria, thereby avoiding generating microplastics that can harm aquatic life and enter the food chain.
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 isn’t advised. Those are basically all sodium.
The pace at which a takeaway container degrades from the salty food may be more than slow enough for it to not matter for that use case — especially if the container uses a coating.
You see the thing is, the point of plastic is that it doesn’t dissolve easily. I can see this having some niche applications, but this won’t be replacing most plastics any time soon.
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.
Yeah, fair enough. That’s a great point. I will update my opinion of this advancement.
Well let’s stop putting plastic into seawater and we won’t have to worry about it dissolving.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Instant micro plastics: just add seawater!
It doesn’t seem to be based on petroleum, since they’re explicitly comparing it to petroleum-based plastics…
There also are other non-petroleum based plastics that dissolve in water. This part is not new. E.g. polyvinyl alcohol is used widely.
What’s new about this one is that it specifically needs salt to dissolve and they claim it’s otherwise relatively sturdy. So maybe it could be used instead of pet bottles for drinks? Or maybe they’re not quite there yet but it’s a new step in that direction…
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.
Maybe we could use this stuff for umbrellas too?
Not in the winter, lol.
For anyone wondering about where, just as an example, polyvinyl is: Polyvinyl acetate (i.e. PVA) is the stuff that wood glue is typically made out of. It’s also the binder used for those bird seed bells.
…It does indeed dissolve in the water. In the rain, certainly, which any owner of a bird seed bell could tell you.
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.
Good, good, there aren’t enough microplastics in the sea, must dissolve more.
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.
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
The material can be used like regular plastic when coated,
Coated with what? If you say PFAS, this is worse than microplastics.
The perfect material for Tesla’s 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.
What does it dissolve into? 🪿 Wait, what does it dissolve into? 🗣️ 🪿
From the article:
Aida said the new material is as strong as petroleum-based plastics but breaks down into its original components when exposed to salt. Those components can then be further processed by naturally occurring bacteria, thereby avoiding generating microplastics that can harm aquatic life and enter the food chain.
As salt is also present in soil, a piece about five centimetres (two inches) in size disintegrates on land after over 200 hours, he added.
The material can be used like regular plastic when coated, and the team are focusing their current research on the best coating methods, Aida said. The plastic is non-toxic, non-flammable, and does not emit carbon dioxide, he added.
So I think the next thing the goose wants to know is, what’s it being coated with?
Is it made of snails?
(/s, in case anyone wants to take that seriously)
That was my first thought, a tide pod also rapidly dissolves in sea water, we shouldn’t be dumping those in the ocean though.
But then how will we maintain the ocean breeze scent?
The tweenagers hosing on Axe in coastal cities will take care of that I think.
It dissolves into salt water.
Except it doesn’t dissolve, this is not the term they should be using, you can’t just dry out the water and get the plastic back. It breaks down into other things. I’m pretty sure an ocean full of dissolved plastic would be a way worse ecological disaster than the current microplastic problem…
I’ve seen like 3-4 articles about this now and they all use the term dissolve and it’s pissing me off.
Removed by mod
