The perfect material for Tesla’s new cyberboat
this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2025
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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
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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.
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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.
Its specifically sensitive to salt, so you can use it for anything with little or no salt without issue. Also it would be perfect for basically all packaging applications that dont involve food but do require an airtight seal. So you could probably replace the majority of all single use plastic packaging/containers with it.
Well let’s stop putting plastic into seawater and we won’t have to worry about it dissolving.
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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.
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.
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So like, just with PFAS, the properties that make plastic so appealing are also what make it detrimental to the environment.
The only way to get rid of plastic is to stop valuing its use. We have to look at life differently, which in many ways is the same.
Nice!
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.
The catch is that it’s useless in most plastics applications, where you really don’t want it to dissolve easily. Probably more catches, but that’s the one I see right away.
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.
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It dissolves with salt. Our sweat will melt it
Ah, of course. Although, they did mention coatings to protect the material, but it does sound like it will be more fragile than existing plastic.
Will that make it easier for our bodies to absorb it?
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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.
Product packaging for non-foods
Sounds great for non-food packages, such as small electronics, toys, etc. Anything that currently comes in a blister pack.
Depends on how much the salt content in the air at coastal places affect it. But if it doesn't that much, then sure, sounds good. Of course, also the intermediate products of decomposition should be nontoxic in that case.
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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.
If the material has to be coated to keep it from breaking down too fast, what is the point?
Presumably you could only coat certain faces of the material (like ones touching food). Or maybe the coating could degrade in another more time-known fashion. So if the coating would be expected to last no more then 3 years then after the plastic could start to degrade.
Food is not the only thing that gets packaged. The worst example that comes to my mind is the way they package microSD cards.
What, you don't think 1cm² of product should be packaged in a 7×10 cm doubled-up plastic sheet?
Food is a reasonable target for biodegradable packaging because you don't really expect the food to sit around for more than a year (for long-term food packaging you just wouldn't use a biodegradable material).
Packaging products that might have a long shelf life is more problematic. If the material breaks down in saltwater then it will start breaking down if someone picks it up with sweaty or recently washed hands.
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It's cool we'll just slap some PFAS on there and fix 'er right up
Plastic coated cardboard containers exist already, and are being widely used for food.
Well right, and coating them with plastic means that they leave plastic residue behind if they break down in an uncontrolled environment, and increases the cost and complexity of recycling:
If the paper has a plastic or aluminum coating, it can be recycled, but it is much more expensive and complicated.
Some plastic coatings can be separated from paper during the recycling process. Still, it is often cheaper and easier to use virgin materials to create new products than recycling paper coated with plastic.
Paper coated with plastic isn’t suitable for composting, and most times, such products are incinerated for heat or landfilled rather than recycled.
https://www.almostzerowaste.com/non-recyclable-paper/
Yes they already exist. They are not really better than pure plastic, they're kind of a form of greenwashing because they appear to be environmentally friendly.
They are not really better than pure plastic, they're kind of a form of greenwashing because they appear to be environmentally friendly.
That's my impression, since all the "environmentally aware" companies use them.
The material can be used like regular plastic when coated,
Coated with what? If you say PFAS, this is worse than microplastics.
huh. happy to know we'll never hear from this again! thanks capitalism!
~~I feel like soluble plastic can't be a good thing actually~~
Edit: the plastic chemically decomposes in water, it does not dissolve
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.
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