Scientists in Japan develop plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours
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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.
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And are we gonna start using this on a mainstream scale?
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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.
So using this for frozen foods, or takeaway containers isn’t advised. Those are basically all sodium.
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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.
Instant micro plastics: just add seawater!
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And are we gonna start using this on a mainstream scale?
chorus NO !
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The perfect material for Tesla’s new cyberboat
Titan 2.0!... But because we don't know this materials strengths yet, we'll add a supportive Styrofoam coating. A generous one.
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chorus NO !
Ok, back to non~biodegradable plastics and fuck this innovation
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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.
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.
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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.
I guess that's part of the reason they're exploring coatings - something to slow down the degradation during regular usage.
