[HN Gopher] Japanese scientists create new plastic that dissolve...
___________________________________________________________________
Japanese scientists create new plastic that dissolves in saltwater
overnight
Author : bentobean
Score : 147 points
Date : 2025-03-28 14:09 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (newatlas.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (newatlas.com)
| lores wrote:
| Obligatory "it's a big step to production", but we need heaps of
| new research on biodegradabe plastics by yesterday, so this is
| hopeful. I wish they'd say what kind of plastic it replaces,
| though.
| nonelog wrote:
| What's the element that will have _this_ invention _NOT_ be
| killed by the usual suspects, though?
|
| It's really not the first time something game-changing has been
| invented, only for it not be heard of ever again.
| DanielHB wrote:
| I dunno, I am sure the plastic industry would be thrilled to be
| able to get around environment concerns.
| thunkingdeep wrote:
| Realistically? Taxes and tax enforcement. That's really the
| only consistent and persistent way to change the incentives of
| the world's economies. In most developed economies, the ultra
| wealthy are able to avoid paying their fair share, and the same
| goes for large corporations as well.
|
| Without fairness, there's really no easy way to talk about
| strategy.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Probably the same thing that kills everything- cost and/or
| durability/usability.
| jerf wrote:
| Making plastics out of sodium, phosphorus, and guanidinium ions
| [1] which the link characterizes as a "strong organic base",
| which is designed to break down and so will do so not just in
| the ocean, suggests to me that there are enough engineering
| disadvantages the article is not talking about that we'll
| probably never see this in real life.
|
| It's chemically quite distant from traditional plastics.
|
| The ocean may not care about some extra sodium and
| phosphorus... and then again, if we made enough, maybe it
| would... but I'll graciously assume for now it wouldn't, but
| the _other_ places this would inevitably end up breaking down
| would probably not appreciate the resulting mess. I have to
| imagine any quantity of this in a fire near humans would be a
| fairly substantial problem of _some_ sort. I don 't know
| exactly what would pop out but it's got some awfully "exciting"
| feedstock going in to it with that sodium and phosphorus.
|
| [1]:
| https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/guanidinium#sectio...
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| The guys marketing these things are really hoping that you have
| forgotten the law of conservation of mass.
|
| The ultimate problem with these dissolving plastics is that
| they are still plastic after they dissolve, it's just that they
| are invisible microplastics instead of visible objects. They
| largely aren't captured at WWTP and end up in the water supply.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This isn't game changing? We ALREADY have biodegradable
| containers that degrade in salt water overnight and can be
| prevented from degrading with a coating that can then be
| breached by a scratch:
|
| It's called paper. I've used paper products with a hydrophobic
| coating (which means plastic, consumers don't like wax coatings
| that much) for decades. They don't solve the problem, because
| the plastic coating still fills us with microplastics.
|
| Maybe it cuts down on how much plastic is produced and thrown
| away, but we could have done this 20 years ago!
|
| There's no conspiracy thwarting "game changing" research to
| maintain some status quo, though there ARE often political
| factions who push for maintenance of the status quo.
|
| This is _marketing_. The people who write this stuff are
| _marketers_ and they usually don 't understand the research in
| the first place!
|
| This is why, despite everyone insisting that there are hundreds
| of "This will revolutionize batteries" that everyone complains
| never materialize, we have actually seen them materialize as
| lithium batteries like doubling in capacity over a decade. The
| marketing material overpromised, though the research was
| fruitful.
|
| Because it's marketing.
| goda90 wrote:
| This is a total guess, but I imagine some of our biggest uses for
| single-use plastic involves food containers, medical equipment,
| and protecting things from the elements during transit. A lot of
| times that means exposure to salty solutions. Dissolving
| overnight would probably be way too fast.
| nonelog wrote:
| > Dissolving overnight would probably be way too fast.
|
| They addressed that issue, it's in the article.
| tbalsam wrote:
| I don't think they really did? A single scratch to cause it
| to break down doesn't seem like it would really be a scalable
| solution for any kind of mass produced material like this.
| Would cause chaos if any individual container went bad in a
| shipment, so it's not really addressed I feel. OP's concerns
| still stand.
| directevolve wrote:
| The next step is engineering a hydrophobic coating or other
| biodegradable packaging that offers an adequate level of
| resistance to accidental scratching for a particular
| application, and identifying applications that are tolerant
| to failure of the plastic or not exposed to salt water.
| permo-w wrote:
| >The next step is engineering a hydrophobic coating or
| other biodegradable packaging that offers an adequate
| level of resistance to accidental scratching for a
| particular application
|
| then you're back to square one. you might as well just
| make the whole thing out of that material
| directevolve wrote:
| If the hydrophobic material has different properties than
| the plastic, they can complement each other. For example,
| soda cans have an inner coating that eliminates a soda
| pop-aluminum interface, preserving flavor and protecting
| the structural integrity of the can.
|
| By analogy, we can imagine sheets of this material where
| nearly all the mass is the degradable plastic, and a thin
| film of coating is enough to preserve it adequately for
| its purpose in the product where it's being used.
| xattt wrote:
| > medical equipment
|
| This will be perfect for IV bags!
| moandcompany wrote:
| Perfect for saline solution, right?
| GloriousKoji wrote:
| If it's been compromised then the whole thing just melts
| away.
| xattt wrote:
| Now help me mop up this mess in the med room.
| garbawarb wrote:
| Simply wrap it in a protective plastic packaging.
| hedayet wrote:
| This is great progress! If a solution like this can reduce global
| hard plastic usage by even 1%, that would be a massive impact.
|
| It's encouraging to see smart people attacking this hard problem
| persistently, delivering new solutions, and inching us closer to
| a real breakthrough with each iteration.
| krisoft wrote:
| > If a solution like this can reduce global hard plastic usage
| by even 1%, that would be a massive impact.
|
| I would understand if it reduces plastic pollution, but how
| could it reduce usage?
| kikoreis wrote:
| Through regulation?
| foundart wrote:
| I read it as "by replacing use of some hard plastics".
| Y_Y wrote:
| If this a good substitute for "hard plastic" then it could
| reduce usage by replacing it.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| But wouldn't the thing we're replacing it with also be a
| hard plastic? Then we're reducing the use of more
| persistent hard plastics but we're not reducing hard
| plastic use overall.
| jokoon wrote:
| Not sure if that thing could be used as food packaging, since
| food has salt and water.
|
| Also that means this plastic probably has a very short lifespan.
| barbazoo wrote:
| > There's one major hurdle with any degradable plastic material
| of course: what if it comes into contact with the catalyst for
| its destruction before you want it to? A plastic cup is no good
| if certain liquids can dissolve it, after all.
|
| > In this case, the team found that applying hydrophobic
| coatings prevented any early breaking down of the material.
| When you eventually want to dispose of it, a simple scratch on
| the surface was enough to let the saltwater back in, allowing
| the material to dissolve just as quickly as the non-coated
| sheets.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Is the coating made of PFAS, or wax?
| 6177c40f wrote:
| Parylene C, a chlorocarbon: [1]
|
| > Derivatives of parylene can be obtained by replacing
| hydrogen atoms on the phenyl ring or the aliphatic bridge
| by other functional groups. The most common of these
| variants is parylene C, which has one hydrogen atom in the
| aryl ring replaced by chlorine. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.ado1782
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parylene#Permeability
| chongli wrote:
| Your remark hints at the fundamental problem with plastics:
| lifespan and chemical resistance. We worked so hard to develop
| plastics which have a long lifespan and high chemical
| resistance which makes them extremely versatile for containers
| and structures we don't want to fall apart on their own.
|
| At the same time, it's these exact same properties of plastics
| which make them non-biodegradable and resistant to being broken
| down by the human body's immune system and waste removal
| processes. The advantages we developed them for are also the
| disadvantages we're trying to replace them for.
|
| In the end, what we truly want is a product that lasts as long
| as we want and no longer. Something that's indestructible while
| it's in use but can be decomposed and recycled instantly with
| the push of a button. This is a paradox!
| permo-w wrote:
| is it a paradox? how unlikely is it that there's a plastic
| substance out there that can be quickly dissolved to bio-
| degradable substances but only using a relatively cheap and
| non-toxic solvent not present in most use cases for plastic?
| that's not a paradox, it's an engineering problem.
| silisili wrote:
| It's what makes sense. I don't think it's that hard given
| materials available, I think companies just forego putting
| thought into it because customers don't care and will claim
| their products are weak and not long lasting, while having to
| spend more money for the problem.
|
| Things like sandwich containers/wrappers shouldn't even be
| plastic to begin with. A salad container should probably not
| have a lifespan of much more than a week or so. A disposable
| cup should probably be designed to hold liquid for a period
| of something like 12-24h then rapidly degrade under liquid.
|
| I'd love to see more alternatives pop up in the short term,
| whether it's natural wax paper, banana leaves, hollowed out
| shells or gourds, some type of thin wood, etc. But plastic is
| just so cheap and ubiquitous it's a hard thing to convince a
| company to do.
| c22 wrote:
| _> A disposable cup should probably be designed to hold
| liquid for a period of something like 12-24h then rapidly
| degrade under liquid._
|
| As someone who once received a beverage in just such a
| disposable cup and then left it in my car overnight I have
| to say _screw this idea_.
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| In Other News: efforts to stem the tide of global
| pollution with microplastics brought to a halt by slobs
| who eat in their car.
|
| Full Disclosure: I eat in my car.
| jacobgkau wrote:
| Would you really drink the rest of an opened beverage
| after it was left in your car overnight, though?
| atrus wrote:
| No, but that doesn't mean they want it _spilled_ all over
| their car either.
| analog31 wrote:
| Those properties also coincide with being less toxic. Greater
| chemical reactivity means more unknown stuff gets into your
| food.
|
| Unfortunately, less toxic until its found that they aren't,
| like PFASs.
| threatofrain wrote:
| Plastic containers have many strengths, but if we consider a
| subset then glass is a competitor. In some sense we can have
| a great container and not worry about substances leeching
| into food, it just won't be as lightweight and trivial as
| plastic.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Would the average consumer be willing to accept the price
| increase due to the weight of glass containers vs plastic?
| The heavier glass will cost the vendor more in shipping on
| top of the container itself. That's shipping from the glass
| maker to the bottling facility, shipping from the bottling
| facility to the distribution center, shipping from distro
| to retail. There could then be additional shipping from
| retail to consumer.
|
| Glass would also be much more susceptible to storage
| temperatures. Liquids susceptible to temps below freezing
| could be bad for glass containers without enough room for
| contents expansion.
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| Flexible glass exists, if used in a non-sphere container,
| the container flexing will allow more volume with same
| surface area. Using flexible glass as a very thin coating
| around paper, a container could be kept lightweight and
| the shipping cheap.
| card_zero wrote:
| The article mentions a hydrophobic coating, like a fence
| around the plastic: once breached by a scratch (or by being
| crushed) the coating no longer keeps salt water out.
|
| I wonder whether the coating itself is made from something
| terrible. In principle, though, there's your "push of a
| button": throw the plastic bottle in a trash compactor, break
| through the coating, now it dissolves in the sea.
| amelius wrote:
| No, we did a bad job. Rocks are also resistant against many
| things. Yet, they are not as much a problem.
| chongli wrote:
| Asbestos is a rock. It makes a fantastic insulation (pretty
| much fireproof) but it's such a huge problem [1] that we
| have specialized workers who remove it from old buildings
| and perform the necessary cleanup to make the area safe.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wittenoom,_Western_Australia
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, that's __one__ type of rock. Not sure what you want
| to prove here.
| userbinator wrote:
| _In the end, what we truly want is a product that lasts as
| long as we want and no longer._
|
| ...and I hope by "we" you mean the owner and not the
| corporations pushing planned obsolescence aggressively,
| because that's exactly what they're going to do with things
| like this.
| chongli wrote:
| I mean we as a society. We want really good containers for
| our food and other goods we purchase but we don't want a
| mountain of indestructible waste piling up everywhere and
| causing pollution and health problems.
|
| Before the invention of plastics we didn't have that. We
| had paper, metal, wood, and glass containers for food. They
| were either water susceptible (paper, wood, and metal) or
| expensive to manufacture and heavy (metal and glass) or
| even brittle and somewhat dangerous (glass but also metal
| with sharp edges).
|
| We still use paper and some metal for a lot of food
| packaging today, but it's always mixed with plastic.
| Plastic bag inserts, plastic coating on paper packaging,
| plastic film to act as a barrier between the food and the
| paper, etc. Even the lowly paper coffee cup is coated with
| PTFE to make it waterproof!
| HappyPanacea wrote:
| A thin coat of flexible glass around lightweight
| biodegradable material (like paper) might work - it is
| lightweight, nonreactive, not brittle or dangerous but
| might be somewhat more expensive to manufacture.
| chongli wrote:
| That would be amazing. I'm not sure how that would be
| possible though. Soda lime glass, our most commonly used
| glass, has a melting point that begins at 700C (~1300F)
| and doesn't become very workable until much higher
| temperatures than that! This is far too hot to be
| anywhere near most ordinary kinds of paper.
|
| Other glasses have much higher melting points than that,
| with fused silica melting at 2200C!
| aeonik wrote:
| This is true, but there are escape hatches to this, so it's
| not a true paradox.
|
| A few examples: If we could get a glass that melts at a lower
| temperature and is more impact resistant, we'd be halfway
| there.
|
| Also, if we could easily melt down the plastic without
| degradation, that would be nice as well.
|
| Also, if we could easily dissolve the plastic in a solvent
| that wasn't highly toxic. That would be great too.
|
| Basically if we could make the containers out something that
| makes it easy to reshape and reuse, we could convince more
| people to collect most of the waste. It would be more
| valuable as an input to many different crafting or
| manufacturing processes.
|
| But also, wood is kind of polymer, and chemical is pretty
| similar to plastic, and there are a lot of different kind of
| plastics out there, they are all pretty different, so it's a
| bit hard to generalize in this area.
| jorvi wrote:
| It's not really a fundamental problem if plastic was only
| used for things that are meant to stay whole a long time. Say
| an RFID tag or a piece of trim on a car.
|
| Currently we put supermarket-made perishable salads in a
| plastic container, we wrap the container in plastic, we put a
| plastic strip lid on it, and we put the oil and nuts in two
| separate plastic wrappers inside the plastic container. That
| is ludicrous insanity for something that perishes in a couple
| of days max.
| porphyra wrote:
| Also human hand sweat has both salt and water so anything that
| requires a human to carry them might not be suitable.
| Asooka wrote:
| It would at least be useful for food delivery, since the
| packaging on that doesn't need to last more than a few hours
| tops.
| bgnn wrote:
| Plastic should not be used as food packaging.
| nilslindemann wrote:
| I love the idea, but we could use glass, cardboard, wood, fabric
| for 90% of the things we are currently packaging with plastic.
| The cheese I am just eating not just has plastic around, but even
| plastic between every single cheese slice. Stuns me that wasting
| resources like this does not get taxed.
| skybrian wrote:
| If an alternative is more expensive, it seems like we should at
| least consider whether it's also wasting more resources? I
| would want to see the comparison done well, rather than simply
| assuming that plastic must be worse.
| honkycat wrote:
| We don't bake cost of proper disposal into materials, that is
| why plastic is so cheap.
|
| The Chinese manufacture the stuff like crazy and ships it all
| of SEA. Rural communities dump it into their rivers and all
| of that washes out into the ocean which ends up EVERYWHERE.
|
| Plastic, and oil in general, has been a global ecologic
| CATASTROPHE.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Cost of disposal for plastic is very small. You can get it
| into a well-made landfill for a couple pennies per pound in
| the US. Charging manufacturers an extra little fraction of
| a penny for an item isn't a bad idea but it wouldn't affect
| much. What matters is government desire to handle trash
| properly.
| leafmeal wrote:
| If you factor in the cost of any government managed trash
| cleanup, it might. Basically require producers to cover
| _all_ of the costs required to get the trash disposed of
| properly. Filtering micro-plastics out of the ocean? Add
| it to the plastic tax. Health costs from birth defects
| caused by certain plastic exposure? Add it to the tax for
| those plastics.
|
| I think the market works amazingly as long as there's
| government to line the incentives up right.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I think disposing properly would mostly be a few more
| public trash cans and a ban on exporting plastic and
| trash to get fake-recycled. Which would not cost very
| much.
| permo-w wrote:
| it's not even necessarily about waste of resources. many
| microplastics and other complex oil-derived chemicals are
| quite obviously not [known to be] safe for human and other
| animals' health. we know pretty much for sure that most wood,
| glass types and natural fibres are safe.
| jerf wrote:
| "An artist's impression of the new plastic, showing the strong
| bonds above the water and how they break down when submerged in
| saltwater"
|
| No, that's an AI image. Which is not itself a problem, but it's
| also useless garbage because neither the AI, _nor_ the person
| generating it, appear to understand what is actually happening,
| and consequently the image is literally _worse than useless_.
| Image has what appear to be benzene rings, although the AI is
| clearly crossing that concept with neurons, but sodium
| hexametaphosphate has a fairly different shape:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hexametaphosphate that I
| would expect an artist to pick up on... and of course the cross-
| contamination of the neuron concept is just wrong.
|
| And even by strictly non-scientific standards, the ocean having
| two distinct surfaces, one below another, is just unsightly and
| obviously wrong. Alternatively, this plastic really does rip
| holes in the ocean's surface and directly expose The Murky Depths
| to the surface world in a geometrically anomalous manner, in
| which case for C'thulu's sake we should probably never
| manufacture this stuff in any quantity.
|
| I won't go so far as to say AI image generation shouldn't be used
| here, but this is a nominally educational context. It needs to be
| screened by someone who can make sure it actually means something
| other than "you are a dummy who can't handle too much text in a
| single block so here's some bling to stab your dopamine receptors
| so you can bear the terrible drudgery of continuing to read".
| 6177c40f wrote:
| Looks like it comes from the original RIKEN article [1], where
| they call it an "artistic rendering" instead of an "artist's
| impression." More accurate, I suppose, but I wish people would
| just actually say if an image is AI generated or not, at least
| for the sake of clarity.
|
| [1]
| https://www.riken.jp/en/news_pubs/research_news/rr/20250327_...
| alphan0n wrote:
| The original [0](PDF, Japanese) was published in November
| 2024 and features a similar but not identical rendering. I
| don't think the original is AI generated at all.
|
| [0]https://www.u-tokyo.ac.jp/content/400252514.pdf
| jacobgkau wrote:
| It looks to me like the original image from that PDF was
| possibly fed into an AI program to generate a similar
| version, probably to get rid of the text (and possibly also
| to change the aspect ratio and/or just make it more
| picturesque for a news article).
| alphan0n wrote:
| That makes sense.
| dylan604 wrote:
| i'm fine if the call it artist impression without calling it
| AI generated. i don't care if the artist's impression was
| created in watercolors, oil, charcoal, or AI. as long as it
| is identified as not an actual image is the main concern
| jacobgkau wrote:
| The problem is that it's an AI program's impression, not an
| artist's impression.
|
| Edit: If you can't get past the fact that AI image
| generators are not equivalent as an artistic medium to
| different types of paint, think of it this way: if I
| describe something to an artist and have them paint it, is
| the resulting image my impression because I prompted the
| artist, or is it the artist's impression of what I
| described? Clearly it's the artist's impression. So just
| because an "AI artist" prompts an AI app, that wouldn't
| make it the prompter's impression; it's still the AI app's
| impression. And an AI app's not an "artist" itself by
| virtue of being a computer program and not a human (as you
| yourself admit by attempting to liken it to a tool such as
| paint).
| dylan604 wrote:
| > The problem is that it's an AI program's impression,
| not an artist's impression.
|
| I just made a similar reply, but I disagree with this.
| The artist iterates with their prompts to the AI tool to
| get what they wanted. So when they stopped tweaking the
| prompt, they were satisfied with the result to be their
| impression
| trompetenaccoun wrote:
| You're fine with being mislead a little?
|
| I'm not a materials scientist so I can't comment on this
| specific topic but based on my experience with pop science
| reporting errors and misinformation often come in
| multiples. The author has a "Bachelor of Arts in
| Professional Writing". RIKEN's press release is already
| written for a general audience and in English, so there
| isn't a good reason not to read the original source
| instead.
| dylan604 wrote:
| yes, because it's not really a misleading title as it is
| still the artist's impression. If the artist didn't like
| it, they would just keep modifying the prompt until they
| were satisfied. So it is the artist's impression.
|
| where are we disagreeing?
| throwaway7679 wrote:
| > It needs to be screened by someone
|
| The people using this stuff want plausible deniability. If
| there's a problem with the slop, the computer did it, not me.
|
| Screening it is contrary to that, so they won't do it.
| astrange wrote:
| That isn't an AI image. This thread is people winning an
| argument in their own heads.
|
| It actually very much looks like the kind of ads for chemical
| companies you see in Japanese airports. (A funny contrast to
| the UK, which has decided it doesn't need to have an economy
| anymore so literally every ad in the London subway is for a
| musical.)
| jacobgkau wrote:
| > That isn't an AI image.
|
| What's your source for that assertion? The image has AI-
| isms and is suspiciously similar to a much less AI-looking
| image that someone else in the thread linked to in a PDF
| regarding the research. You can say it looks like a human
| could've done it, but that's not any less "winning an
| argument in your own head" unless you've got evidence of
| what human drew that image.
| astrange wrote:
| I don't see any AI-isms. The most common one would be
| that parts of the image tend to be conceptually unclear
| or blend together, but these are recognizable objects
| composited into one image.
|
| At most the bubbles could be, but I think they're just
| stock art.
| blix wrote:
| Using something similar to a benzene ring with spokes sticking
| out of it is absolutely a reasonable choice for depicting
| sodium hexametaphosphate in a schematic. This is actually a
| pretty common choice in scientific literature regarding this
| molecule.
| jklinger410 wrote:
| Excited to never see this technology get used!
| honkycat wrote:
| The fact we haven't globally banned single use plastic is
| incredibly stupid.
| foundart wrote:
| What a great development. Commenters have noted various
| challenges that will need to be addressed but they seem largely
| solvable to me. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this as it
| moves from the lab to real applications.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Best placement for this plastic is to be in a composite of other
| materials like cotton fiber.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Looks like we can have plastic straws shamelessly now. And
| plastic cutlery as well.
| mirawelner wrote:
| Every week I hear about a new solution to plastic. Every week
| more microplastics end up in my brain. I feel like we are not
| solving the problem.
| userbinator wrote:
| There never has been a problem. It's only the fact that the
| industry has found a new virtue-signaling way to get you to
| consume more that they started collaborating with extremists in
| pushing the "plastics bad" propaganda.
| deadbabe wrote:
| Only three things in life are certain: taxes, death, and
| microplastics. And I'm not sure about the former.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| Honestly an ideal plastic is one that completely dissolves in
| water/salt water in 5-20 years. You want durability, just not the
| ability to last for tens of thousands of years.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I'm worried this will cause a buildup of plastic in arctic
| regions during the summer
| nonelog wrote:
| Stop worrying and read the article, it contains the answer.
| h4ck_th3_pl4n3t wrote:
| Actual source (source of source of source):
|
| https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ado1782
|
| More research from Takuzo Aida, which is quite impressive to read
| how they got there:
|
| https://www.science.org/authored-by/Aida/Takuzo
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(page generated 2025-03-28 23:01 UTC)