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.

What, you don't think 1cm² of product should be packaged in a 7×10 cm doubled-up plastic sheet?

Product packaging for non-foods

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.

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.

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.

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.

Also probably gonna turn out it dissolves into smaller plastics, perfectly sized for penetrating the blood-brain-barrier.

Edit: I get it, no new technology has ever had issues with safety and efficacy uncovered after entering mass production and being discarded with reckless abandon in our environment

I apologize to the articles authors for my cynicism, it is clear from the article that nothing bad could possibly come from allowing this new plastic to dissolve in our oceans. It is nice to see plastic pollution has been definitively solved for the rest of time and we no longer have to worry about 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.

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

The perfect material for Tesla’s new cyberboat

Well let’s stop putting plastic into seawater and we won’t have to worry about it dissolving.

I have a name for that boat: Cybersunk

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.

It just accelerated the microplastic pipeline.

It's a bit of a stretch calling it a plastic, as it's not petroleum based from what I've read.

Thats very fitting, I would also accept CyberD (cyber dissolved)

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?

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.