The material can be used like regular plastic when coated,

Coated with what? If you say PFAS, this is worse than microplastics.

Aida said the new material is as strong as petroleum-based plastics but breaks down into its original components when exposed to salt.

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.

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.

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.

Plastic coated cardboard containers exist already, and are being widely used for food.

So like, just with PFAS, the properties that make plastic so appealing are also what make it detrimental to the environment.

The only way to get rid of plastic is to stop valuing its use. We have to look at life differently, which in many ways is the same.

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.

It's cool we'll just slap some PFAS on there and fix 'er right up

Food is not the only thing that gets packaged. The worst example that comes to my mind is the way they package microSD cards.

Sounds great for non-food packages, such as small electronics, toys, etc. Anything that currently comes in a blister pack.

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:

If the paper has a plastic or aluminum coating, it can be recycled, but it is much more expensive and complicated.

Some plastic coatings can be separated from paper during the recycling process. Still, it is often cheaper and easier to use virgin materials to create new products than recycling paper coated with plastic.

Paper coated with plastic isn’t suitable for composting, and most times, such products are incinerated for heat or landfilled rather than recycled.

11 Types Of Paper That Cannot Be Recycled - Almost Zero Waste

What paper cannot be recycled, and why we can recycle certain paper products and others - not? Find these & more questions on paper recycling.

Almost Zero Waste (www.almostzerowaste.com)

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.

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.

It dissolves with salt. Our sweat will melt it

If the material has to be coated to keep it from breaking down too fast, what is the point?

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.

Will that make it easier for our bodies to absorb 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.

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