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

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.

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.

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.

And are we gonna start using this on a mainstream scale?

The perfect material for Tesla’s new cyberboat

chorus NO !

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.

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.

The perfect material for Tesla’s new cyberboat

I guess that's part of the reason they're exploring coatings - something to slow down the degradation during regular usage.

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.

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.

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.

So using this for frozen foods, or takeaway containers isn’t advised. Those are basically all sodium.

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.