The face of plastic is changing. I recently wrote about a new type of living, mushroom-based plastic that is both highly durable and biodegradable. Now, scientists in Japan have announced a revolutionary new type of plastic that is also biodegradable. So much so that if it were to make its way into the ocean, as so much of our plastic waste does, it would disintegrate in the seawater (or moist soil) within hours. Not years or decades. Literal hours.
Like the living mushroom-based plastic I previously mentioned, this quick-dissolving plastic is no slouch. The researchers claim it’s strong like traditional petroleum-based plastics, but rather than choking the life from our oceans, it self-destructs. Upon making contact with the salty water, it begins the process of breaking down into harmless components that common ocean bacteria can munch on, turning it into fuel that helps maintain our oceans’ health. It produces no carbon emissions and would result in zero microplastics. A two-liter of Dr. Pepper at 3 PM on a summer beach day would be a buffet for amoebas by 4.
This innovation, along with the mushroom one, couldn’t come at a better time. The UN is warning that plastic waste could triple by 2040, with up to 37 million tons potentially clogging up the oceans every single year. It would be nice if some of the stuff could destroy itself as safely and harmlessly as possible, since the human effort to get it out of the oceans would be monumental and expensive.
Project lead Takuzo Aida says the goal isn’t just to make biodegradable junk, but to create something that works like plastic, holds up in packaging, then once it’s been tossed out, just poofs and vanishes out of existence. He also says that their project has already received some interest from the packaging industry.
As with any scientific advancement, it’s not enough to simply make a groundbreaking, revolutionary product that completely changes the game and appreciably improves all of our collective lives on the planet. You need to find a way to easily mass-produce it while reducing its manufacturing costs. Unfortunately, few companies are going to pay a premium just to save the planet, regardless of whether or not they live on it.
Still, there seems to be some momentum and interest in a dissolvable, non-toxic, non-flammable plastic that doesn’t hang around for decades. Now we just need someone to come up with an idea for how to get rid of this plastic that’s already out there and inside of us.
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