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.
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.
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The perfect material for Tesla’s new cyberboat
Perfect since he's being invited to Russia now. They can share their know-how of sinking ships.
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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
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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.
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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.
The catch would be the reactor. An EVA type of plastic reactor can output more than 12 tons per hour these days.
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Let’s build a ship out of it.
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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.
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And are we gonna start using this on a mainstream scale?
We use plenty of biodegradable plastics. They’re not always the correct solution. You wouldn’t want an airplane biodegrading, for example.
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We use plenty of biodegradable plastics. They’re not always the correct solution. You wouldn’t want an airplane biodegrading, for example.
I’d love that actually. While I’m flying preferably
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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.
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Grok 4 has been so badly neutered that it's now programmed to see what Elon says about the topic at hand and blindly parrot that line.
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