Technology

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Good, good, there aren't enough microplastics in the sea, must dissolve more.

Nice!

huh. happy to know we'll never hear from this again! thanks capitalism!