Scientists in Japan develop plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours
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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.
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.
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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 just accelerated the microplastic pipeline.
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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's a bit of a stretch calling it a plastic, as it's not petroleum based from what I've read.
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I have a name for that boat: Cybersunk
Thats very fitting, I would also accept CyberD (cyber dissolved)
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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 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…
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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?
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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.
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Thats very fitting, I would also accept CyberD (cyber dissolved)
It is also a short for cyberDick, in honor of their CEO.
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Thats very fitting, I would also accept CyberD (cyber dissolved)
I think that's a mod for CP2077...
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Ok now make fishing nets from it because that's 40% of the plastic in the sea.
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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
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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.
Did you guys even read the article?
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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
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Given the username, the immediate emotional reaction when expecting damage to ocean life is understandable
Unironically, I am passionate about marine environmentalism lol
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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
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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.
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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.
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.
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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.
Spacers inside an electric circuit? 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.
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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
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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.
