Don’t sweat on it.
this post was submitted on 18 Dec 2025
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If this is feasible, the use of environmentally friendly plastic will become politically divisive.
WOKE PLASTIC
How can I enjoy shopping while knowing that a sea turtle will never choke on the grocery bags??? 😭
Don't cry too much, you'll melt your shopping bags!
Although this is good to hear, we could also just keep dumping PVA into our environment until an organism develops that can metabolise it and subsequently adapts to eat any kind of plastic ultimately rendering all plastics useless. Bonus points if metabolising the plastics releases toxic byproducts further ultra whopperfuck killing the bleeding piss out of everything that happens to be nearby
Edit: although I am grateful for the earnest replies, I would like to mention that I intended my post to be sarcastic
We have plenty of organisms that can eat wood, that hasn't rendered wood useless to us.
We use plastic for alot of things that need to be sterile. Food packaging medical equipment etc
Or someone could make one
Stories like this pop up all the time "Bugs eat plastics" "Plastics turned back into fuel" "Plastics reused into new objects"
None of it turns into any real solutions, and I can only assume it's a greenwashing campaign with a science veneer, by spreading the idea that eventually science will make plastics fully recyclable/reusable/compostable.
The greenwashing plastics/petroleum industry is preying on the idea that there's a solution on the horizon for the unsolvable problem of plastics recycling and reuse.
Please reduce or even eliminate plastics use, if possible.
Especially single use plastics.
It takes decades to move the needle on manufacturing lines around the world. Once you make a new discovery you have to deploy it. That’s the difficult part. Unless you have a government mandate, it takes even longer. Companies are lazy and won’t change. Why do something when I can do nothing and continue to make money?
Also, solutions like this will obviously cost more, even with further development and scale. It takes legislation to force the issue, so, more time.
It's reminiscent of this XKCD:
I think of it as pablum used to keep people complacent with the status quo. Don’t change, a fix is right around the corner a few years away. Same idea just a different way to say it.
Stories like this crop up around plastics, carbon capture (like @oeuf@slrpnk.net said), and batteries. How many stories have you seen about batteries with the term “game changer” in it?
Not making a case for nihilism or apathy. Just healthy skepticism and make the changes you can in the meantime, like reducing single use plastics where you can.
How many stories have you seen about batteries with the term “game changer” in it?
Can you honestly look at the world today and say with a straight face that the game has not changed with regards to battery tech?
Compare electric cars and battery-powered computer runtime from 20 years ago, 10 years ago, and 5 years ago. It’s crazy! I just worked all day on my laptop without plugging it in and the battery isn’t even half dead. I can go anywhere to work and don’t require an outlet. The game has changed. This advancement in battery tech is ongoing and has not stopped.
That is definitely true. And it is also true that YouTubers and other tech news outlets have been promising that new battery tech will make EVs work just like gas cars and you won’t have to suffer any inconvenience or trade offs. Just wait a few years and all the problems will go away. Or maybe it will be hydrogen again this year.
Meanwhile progress is a slow grind that gets better incrementally every year. Real step changes are pretty rare. But not according to headlines.
I’m happy with the progress and cheer for more. But am going to continue to be skeptical of the “game changers” until they show up in the market and prove themselves out.
There needs to be a financial benefit or punitive incentive for companies to move from conventional oil based products. Ethics or the viability of the planet just aren't viable grounds under capitalism.
This is apparently also the case with carbon capture.
Cellulose acetate is over 120 years old. This is just another version.
Probably funded by the American Institute for Corn Ubiquity in All Facets of Life Oh My God We Love Corn So Obsessed Please Buy
Year of Corn Products from the American Heartland
Well it tastes awful so it's nice they found a use for it.
Wtf kind of corn are you eating that it tastes awful? It's nowhere near my favorite food but sign me up for some corn on the cob or Mexican street corn any day of the summer
Sorry maybe not awful per se, but tastes neutral, whole kernels get bits between the teeth and you have to floss after. Experience is less than mid but people claim it's like an orgasm in your mouth. Same thoughts about steak, or Batman movies.
it tastes great after smothering it in a stick of butter - average american, probably
Yeah... Not liking steak really was a frustrating experience growing up there. Similar experience I'm sure with other food stuff: "you just haven't had it prepared right" said 50th+ person who wants to cook me a medium rare steak with salt and pepper, oiled, over a charcoal barbeque only to be middling flavor, terribly chewy and get stuck between teeth.
Pro tip! Mom had bad teeth so she'd stand the cob on end and cut the kernels off. Takes a few tries to figure the cut depth just right. Best of both worlds, fresh corn and no stuck bits!
But i could eat flavorful beans or lentils or berries. This corn, even off the cob, has wasted space on my plate. It is better made into proper corn foods like corn bread or tortillas.
Skimmed the abstract and couldn't see how they define "salt water". Did not see it.
Theoretically, this has utility for shipping. So let's say you have a pallet of water bottles. The bottles themselves will likely stay more traditional plastics. The plastic wrapping the 32 pack's cardboard could potentially be this. The plastic wrap around the entire pallet of a bunch of stacks of those 32 packs? I... would probably still go traditional plastic, honestly.
Because a LOT of beverages are shockingly salty when you look at them (because salt is good and helps us retain water). If that is enough to even come close to triggering degradation then you lose the ability to store those bottles "indefinitely" and you drastically increase the risk that someone's bottle breaks in their hand while they are leaving the 7-11. Which... defeats the purpose of WHY we use plastic for all this. And... it is a lot cheaper to have "one" bottle factory rather than one for each type of beverage.
As for that outermost layer? I would honestly just be terrified of a loading dock in the winter. Salt the ever loving hell out of that to minimize ice growth. And then suddenly you have pallets falling apart because of "quick" degradation.
It might also be completely unusable if it's going to be touched by human hands, as hands get sweaty, and sweat is salty water.
Will be branded "Clean Plastic" until they find the inevitable, terrible side-effect.
I hope this is useful and commercially viable enough to replace plastics, at least in part. Pullulan has been touted as plastic made from cellulose, but so far it's only been used in Listerine breath strips, as far as I know.
Does stuff like this actually end up being used though? Or is it just a "cool we made this" type of thing that goes nowhere
Glasses frames were made of cellulose plastics from the early 1900s. This could go far because it's cheap AF.
That's pretty cool
My personal belief is that it's mostly cool and won't see any heavy commercialized use in the near future, due to heavy lobbying from the petroleum industry and the whole but-think-of-the-poor-oil-execs gang.
That's how it usually goes, unfortunately.
Unless you can serve food in it and toss it in the dishwasher without it melting or falling apart, it’s basically pointless.
Ceramics exist and is also biodegradable.
Who out there eating primarily off of plastic plates?
You might need to hear that most plastics should not be put in the dishwasher, or reused for food. There was an infograohic posted a while ago.
So one kind of plastic has to serve every use case of plastic in order to be plastic with a point?
No, but that’s been the biggest barrier to these kinds of plastics reaching global adoption. The vast majority of plastics have something to do with food production, or are exposed to myriad chemicals and temperatures. If they can’t do literally everything that normal plastics can do for the same price or cheaper, they won’t penetrate the market. I’m all for them, but it’s gonna be really tough to make any kind of dent.