Experts say the new material breaks down quickly in around two to three hours, depending on its thickness and size. Find out more here.
  • Ulrich_the_Old
    1·
    2 days ago

    So if you dissolve salt into water you get saltwater. If you dissolve plastic into water do you get plasticwater?

  • Optional@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 days ago

    The new plastic was co-developed by the University of Tokyo in Japan and the country’s RIKEN Centre for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS).

    Researchers say it is made by combining two small molecules which form a strong bond that allows the new material to stay tough and flexible.

    While scientists have long experimented with biodegradable plastics, the team say their invention breaks down much more quickly and leaves no trace.

    When placed in a mixture which had the same amount of salt as seawater, they found the new plastic dissolved “quickly in about two to three hours, depending on its thickness and size.”

    And it’s not just in water where the new plastic can dissolve.

    Takuzo Aida, lead researcher at CEMS, explained: “Similarly, when tested in soil…a piece of plastic about 5 centimetres in size, it completely disappears after a little over 200 hours.”

    • masterofn001
      6·
      2 days ago

      It has to leave a trace.

      Something must be a produced as the result of the chemical reaction. Maybe not ‘plastic’ but it cannot possibly be nothing.

        • masterofn001
          4·
          2 days ago

          Pico plastics!

          If you can’t see it without a electron microscope laser interferometer, it doesn’t exist!

          • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
            1·
            2 days ago

            Oh yay, the Trump method of solving problems. If you stop testing for it, or can’t see it then not an issue. I would think pico plastics will be worse then micro ones?

            • masterofn001
              2·
              2 days ago

              The picometre is one thousandth of a nanometre (⁠1/1000 nm), one millionth of a micrometre (also known as a micron)

              So, yeah.

              If something was that small there would be absolutely no way of filtering out or preventing it from getting in.

              But, that’s just an if.

              The article doesn’t say what the molecules are they used. So to speculate on the product of it’s decomposition is not really productive. But, the statement that it (impossibly) leaves no trace is absolutely false.