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Science

Novel Plastic Disintegrates In a Week In Sunlight and Oxygen (newatlas.com) 113

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Atlas: By making alterations to the plastic manufacturing process, scientists hope to produce forms of the ubiquitous material that can break down far more safely and quickly in the environment than current versions do. Researchers in China have now demonstrated a new example of this that degrades in just a week when exposed to sunlight and oxygen, which they believe could make for electronics that are easier to dispose of at the end of their lives. The new material came about when study author Liang Luo from China's Huazhong University of Science and Technology was working on an advanced type of chemical sensor, as reported by PNAS. The materials scientist was developing a novel polymer film that changed color in response to pH levels. This process was driven by the material's unique molecular structure, with the chains of monomers giving the film its deep red color, and taking it away when these bonds were broken.

Through his team's experiments, Luo found that the deep red color of the film quickly faded away and the material broke apart after several days in the sunlight. Breaking apart these bonds is a common objective in research efforts to better recycle plastics, and in doing so Luo may have inadvertently conjured up a promising, environmentally friendly version of the material. The molecular makeup of the plastic means it wouldn't be suited for use in soda bottles or shopping bags, as it is only stable as a functional material in the dark and without oxygen. But exposed to sunlight and air, it disintegrates rapidly and completely decomposes within a week, leaving no environmentally damaging microplastic fragments behind. A byproduct of the process is naturally occurring succinic acid, however, which could potentially be upcycled for commercial use in pharmaceuticals or food.

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Novel Plastic Disintegrates In a Week In Sunlight and Oxygen

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  • Scientists (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    A: We got good news and bad news!

    B: What's the good news?

    A: We developed a plastic that degrades in one week.

    B: Great! And the bad?

    A: It leaves an acid that eats away the world.

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      More like - Good news: We developed a plastic that degrades in one week. Bad News: Useless for almost everything we use plastic for.
      • Uses (Score:5, Insightful)

        by JBMcB ( 73720 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @09:12AM (#61577939)

        Drinking straws
        Disposable medical stuff (syringes, pads, etc...)
        Shopping bags
        Food packaging (plastic trays inside cardboard boxes)
        Product packaging (carriers for cell phones)

        You're right in that there are a lot of applications it won't be useful for, but there are still quite a few use cases where degradable plastic would be beneficial.

        • by DrXym ( 126579 )
          You might only use a straw for 10 minutes, but it's sitting in a stock room or in a container for possibly months or years. So unless stores are meant to seal stuff in nitrogen containers or whatever then what's the point? Same for the other examples. That doesn't even get into whether such a plastic has any of the properties necessary to be a straw, syringe etc., or whether by breaking down it potentially contaminates other things.
          • by bjwest ( 14070 )

            I don't know of many manufacturers or stores that have their stockroom out in the open in back of the building. Did you even read TFS? It breaks down in sunlight and oxygen, not in a cool dark stockroom.

            As for the "by breaking down it potentially contaminates other things", I'd have to say yes. It breaks down either into microplastics or the base chemicals used to create it, both of which are toxic and cause problems in the environment.

            • One of the points of the better article is that it doesn't break down into microplastics.
            • by DrXym ( 126579 )
              Sttock rooms contain oxygen. Some also have windows and all of them have lights. Not to mention the straw receptacles that might be sitting out front, conspicuously not in the stock room. And for that matter all the points of a straw's life from the moment it is manufactured.

              Unless the item in question were sealed in nitrogen or a vacuum presumably with the aid of another plastic which didn't decompose, and used immediately I wouldn't see much purpose to it.

          • "sunlight *AND* oxygen" (emphasis mine), not "sunlight *OR* oxygen".
            • by DrXym ( 126579 )
              Regardless of it being and / or, it is an absurd requirement in all those examples and there are simply better alternatives that are compostable / biodegradable already. e.g. many countries are already banning the use of plastic in single use utensils like straws, cutlery etc. as well as oxo-degradable plastics (i.e. those that decompose into micro plastics).
          • You might only use a straw for 10 minutes, but it's sitting in a stock room or in a container for possibly months or years

            Inside a paper wrapper, inside a cardboard box. Just how much sunlight do you think will hit the straw in storage?

            So unless stores are meant to seal stuff in nitrogen containers

            From TFTitle of the TFSummary:

            Novel Plastic Disintegrates In a Week In Sunlight and Oxygen

            • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
              So still kind of useless then. Not a lot of sunlight in trash bags and trash cans. Not a lot of sunlight or oxygen when it's buried under tons of other trash at the dump either.
              • Until that trash degrades in sunlight and oxygen, exposing it. Or maybe it'll have its own pile.
              • So still kind of useless then. Not a lot of sunlight in trash bags and trash cans. Not a lot of sunlight or oxygen when it's buried under tons of other trash at the dump either.

                Not all plastics end up at the dump or recycling. The benefit for disposable plastics that get casually thrown into the ocean or forests is immense.

                • by EvilSS ( 557649 )
                  Not all plastics float in the ocean either, as we see with plastics on the ocean floor today. Seems like a pretty small use case.
              • The use cases would be:

                1. Plastic that is not properly disposed of (mostly litter)
                2. Intentional degradation while disposing of other materials to reduce contamination (eg. recycling electronics)

            • by DrXym ( 126579 )
              Paper lets through light and oxygen you know. It's just absurd to think any of the listed applications are in any way practical. And that's even before considering the material properties of this plastic or suitability to become a straw, a bag or whatever.
              • Paper lets through light and oxygen you know

                Depends on the thickness and dye in the paper.

                Also, it's probably the UV light in sunlight that causes it to break down, and that's blocked by these highly advanced technologies known as "roofs" and "windows".

                • by DrXym ( 126579 )
                  Windows do not generally block UV-A light and regular electric lights emit UV. It may not be as much as the sun but it is day in and day out. And just think about the absurdity of expecting a place to have UV filtered glass / bulbs because of fucking straws or food wrap or whatever.

                  Especially when countries are already regulating single use utensils and straws can be made of paper and other compostable materials already exist for other purposes.

        • I'm fairly sure that any use for medical, food or other applications that may in some way come into contact with living tissue is out of the question because that stuff doesn't just dissolve into nothing.

        • It Depends (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Roger W Moore ( 538166 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @10:36AM (#61578209) Journal
          It depends on how light-sensitive this plastic is. If it is very light sensitive then unless the items you mention are stored in a light-tight environment then the plastic will decay before it ever gets used as a straw, syringe or plastic bag and nobody wants to buy a new product only to open the box and find a lot of rotted plastic.

          On the other hand, if it needs full sunlight for a week then it will probably not decay at all since it will be put in a bin and then a landfill where it will be quickly covered. So I remain very sceptical about the uses for this. We already have biodegradable plastic which should be even better than this since it will rot in a landfill without light and yet this does not seem to have resulted in its widespread adoption for the very uses you list.
          • by dryeo ( 100693 )

            The sides of the road here have lots of plastic coffee cup covers (and cups), mostly from Tim Hortons and McDonald's, be nice if they broke down.

        • Drinking straws

          Taco Bell uses paper straws at many locations now. They work fine for sodas, they've been inferior for freezes.

        • I reuse "single use" shopping bags for years before they break. It would be nice if they didn't disintegrate in the sun on my walk back to my car.

          But yes, there are potential applications -- more of them if the process that makes it disintegrate quick in sunlight doesn't also happen to reduce lifespan when not in sunlight.

    • This is nothing new. I read about plastics like this decades ago. And the fatal flaw is that these items are quickly buried in landfills, safely away from the oxygen and sunlight that might break them down. Maybe the newer incarnation breaks down fast enough to make a difference?
      • That's not as much of a problem: the plastic in the landfills isn't the plastic killing turtles and seals. The plastic that ends up in the ocean INSTEAD of a landfill is the problem, and if it degrades after a week then all the better.

        • Actually...the plastic killing those animals is often discarded fishing nets snagged far enough underwater that aren't getting a whole lot of oxygen or sunlight either.
          • plus floating trash blown into rivers and streams and carried out to the ocean.

            • And if you make fishing nets more sunlight and oxygen sensitive what to you get more of? Christ people do I have to connect every single dot?
              • how deep under water. if the density of the material drops as it degrades then it could float. and then be on the surface where sunlight, oxygen, and wave action will very quickly degrade it further.

                Christ people do I have to connect every single dot?

                I once opened a coloring booking at a doctor's office that a little kid managed fill every page without connecting any of the dots. Maybe he imagined some dots that I could not see, he was probably as convinced of what he was doing as you are.

                • Okay. Fishing nets are routinely hauled to the surface where there is plenty of oxygen and sunlight. This "solution" then makes those nets weaker and more likely to fail. Where they fail is at/near the bottom of the ocean when they snag on obstructions. There is not a great deal of oxygen or sunlight there so you are in fact advocating turtle killing. That's okay, maybe a turtle wronged you at some point, but don't take it out on every other turtle.
    • Re:Scientists (Score:4, Informative)

      by tonique ( 1176513 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @09:53AM (#61578071)
      For your (all of you) information, the acid is succinic acid [wikipedia.org]. It isn't particularly dangerous to the environment as far as I can tell. You shouldn't ingest it, of course.
      • Whoosh... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward

        It was joke. In your zeal to show /. your inner Comic Book Guy, you COMPLETELY missed the fact that humor was the point, not a hard science discourse worthy of a journal peer review.

        In short: there's book smarts, and there's intelligence. Possession of the first does not automatically confer the latter. Don't be "that guy" who has to immediately jump in to show how many books you have checked out from the library. Read the room, and act accordingly.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @08:09AM (#61577775)

    Most things from China seem to degrade in a week

    • I was thinking "Novel plastic? This sounds like the stuff modern cars' headlight lenses are made of."

    • by hey! ( 33014 )

      China is capable of making whatever it's customers want to buy, but you have to remember their customers aren't *you*. It's customers are retailers who only have to have the things they sell to you last long enough to be out of any implied warranty period. If we were better consumers, we'd get better products.

      If we cared as much about durability and serviceability as we did the instant gratification of buying and the convenience of throwing things away at the public expense, we'd live in a world of durabl

      • Sorry. No mod points. But insightful.

        We've become a society willing to tolerate useless crap.

        When that changes, our trading partners will adapt to change accordingly.

        We've been through a few cycles of that already (e.g., Japan from the late 60s through the mid-80s). I think another one is coming. COVID, and the response thereto, destroyed about a third of the US economy. Inflation will seriously erode most people's purchasing power, and might force them to consider that one pair of shoes that lasts a y

    • Not sure about the editorial policy here but this terse line is very dim witted. Just change China to your favorite prejudicial object!
    • Most things from China seem to degrade in a week

      Just not the Novel Coronavirus, or the CCP for that matter...

  • OK... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by peppepz ( 1311345 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @08:18AM (#61577797)
    ...but if stuff rots while it's still being used, people won't be happy.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 )

      You don't use it for products that will be exposed to that environment.

      We have antique wood furniture that is hundreds of years old. But if you have it sit outside it would degrade into dust within a few years.

      Plus the amount of plastic stuff that we make just to be tossed. Such as packaging material, disposable forks and spoons... There isn't going to be one product to solve all issues, because we don't have one product right now. The Plastic formulation for your Soda Bottle is much different than the pl

      • It's perfect for nerds, then: no sunlight, no oxygen. They can make their "pocket toys" out of it!

    • This is simply going to have to be a tradeoff we make as a society. There is always going to be some spoilage for lack of a better term. We're used to it with fresh fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. Some stuff spoils and they have to throw it out.

      Maybe soda bottles end up with a practical lifespan of 1 year before things start to breakdown. That's not horrible. Hopefully there's an easy external indicator that the container is going bad and they know to throw it out before it leaks everywhere.

  • by Java Pimp ( 98454 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @08:23AM (#61577813) Homepage

    would name their website PNAS?

    • Have you seen the Washington Monument?

    • The publication and abbreviation PNAS dates back to 1915, so this outcome was set in motion well before Paul Baran and Donald Davies, inventors of packet switching, were even a twinkle in their respective parents' eyes.
    • would name their website PNAS?

      When they were making the website, some intern working at the National Academy of Sciences suggested they name it the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or P.N.A.S." thinking it would be an amusing joke that would be spotted it. Weeks later, that intern was struck with dread when he found they had already invested a substantial amount of funds into purchasing pnas.org and there was no going back. They ended up hiring him and after working his way up he is now the primary site administrator o

    • would name their website PNAS?

      ....12 years old and can only parse dick jokes.

  • Lets make everything from this plastic, including bridges.
  • If so, then we don't solve the carbon problem. We even make it a little worse by releasing carbon faster ?
    • - self-destructing AOL CDs
    • - diet pepsi and mentos time delay fuses
    • - greasy spoon? look again, there is no spoon
  • Naturally occurring sounds great as long as it is not in toxic concentrations.

    • by hawk ( 1151 )

      Wait a minute, are you suggesting that using arsenic and cyanide in this plastic as the critical binding agents was a bad idea?

  • "It is only stable as a functional material in the dark and without oxygen" --so it will only be suitable for use in caves (devoid of sunlight), space (devoid of oxygen), and space caves (unless it's actually an exogorth)...

    "which they believe could make for electronics that are easier to dispose of"

    I don't really see electronics as being a good use-case for this product. People would have to live like the zombies in "I am Legend" just to preserve their smartphones. They wouldn't even be safe in Seattle th

    • The degradation requires both sunlight and oxygen. Put the electronics inside a box while they're in use, and no more sunlight.

      Or use it on products where they'll only be used briefly while exposed to sunlight, like drinking straws.

      • The degradation requires both sunlight and oxygen. Put the electronics inside a box while they're in use, and no more sunlight.

        Great. Except you have now doubled the overall material waste by putting it inside a second case. Ice-T would be proud:

        Yo, dude! I heard you like plastic, but want to pretend to like the planet, so I took your phone's guts and put it inside biodegradable plastic, then put that inside another plastic case! Now your phone is as big as my ride, and 30% biodegradable!

        • Great. Except you have now doubled the overall material waste by putting it inside a second case

          Do you seriously think the chips and connectors are exposed on most electronics?

          It turns out my PC already has a case. Weird, right?

  • It is plastic that is essentially unusable when exposed to sunlight and oxygen. So you need to cover the plastic in... plastic?

    The idea is that it could be used to make internal structures out of this material, electronics are given as an example. So that once you open the case, you don't have to worry about the insides polluting the environment. But there is a lot more than plastic in there and you still need to process the case properly, so it feels like it is the solution to the least problem. Still a go

    • by brunes69 ( 86786 )

      The whole article is baffling to me because the internals of most electronics are not plastic at all. They are PCB boards and components.

      What is the plastic they are even talking about?

      Also unclear, is how you plan to entirely isolate from light and oxygen. The inside of most electronics is not air-tight, nor is it light-tight, because there are air vents. Even a little bit of light and O2 getting in could cause failure over time.

      I personally don't think that a TV blowing up after 6 months of usage is envir

      • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

        There's lots of plastic in computers. Look at all the connectors, for instance. That might not be "lots" to you but it's a significant amount wrt the amount of electronics there are.

    • You had to say it, didn't you? I can already see some asshole C-Level somewhere go "And as soon as they disassemble it to fix it, it falls apart! Brilliant!"

    • It is plastic that is essentially unusable when exposed to sunlight and oxygen

      It doesn't degrade instantly. Takes a week to degrade completely, so should still be usable within a day.

      How long do you use a disposable drinking straw?

      • by GuB-42 ( 2483988 )

        Not long, but it takes months or even years before I finish the pack.
        So it means that now, I have to keep these straws in a special container if I don't want my whole pack to turn into dust. Individual packaging is missing the point. We want less waste, not more. We can imagine McDonalds using them, assuming it is food safe and economical, because they can use up large packs within a day, but these applications are limited.
        Most of the disposable plastics are used for packaging, where they are supposed to pr

        • So it means that now, I have to keep these straws in a special container if I don't want my whole pack to turn into dust

          That highly specialized container known as "the box they came in". Cardboard or paperboard do manage to block light.

          Also, it's probably the UV in sunlight that breaks it down. So, keep your stash of straws indoors whether or not there's a box. Assuming you don't object to the highly advanced technology known as "windows".

          Most of the disposable plastics are used for packaging, where they are supposed to protect from sunlight and oxygen

          A huge number of the things shipped to me contain plastic bags that hold air as cushioning for the thing being shipped. Inside a box, where they are not exposed to light.

  • No news here. Just spinning cheap broken shit as being green when it's really the opposite.

    Good durable plastic ideally should not break down or leach chemicals at all. When properly disposed into a landfill or ground up and recycled, no waste would go where it doesn't belong.

    Stuff that breaks down in sunlight (many cheap plastics do that already) just makes little pieces with more surface area that either leach out more chemicals over that surface area or are more easily blown away into oceans or woods or

  • A byproduct of the process is naturally occurring succinic acid, however, which could potentially be upcycled for commercial use in pharmaceuticals or food.

    Lots of things are naturally occurring but cause problems when redistributed. Succinic acid is part of our bodies, and necessary for several of our internal processes, but it is also implicated in tumor growth when it accumulates. Is there any negative implication of potentially producing large amounts of it in the environment?

    • by Reziac ( 43301 ) *

      Also, what ELSE does it break down into, is it hazardous in commercial quantities, and what becomes of it??

      Seems to me piles of relatively-inert plastic are less of a problem than plastics that break down into hazardous chemicals, which then get redistributed every time it rains.

  • Plastic (speaking in an astonishingly broad generality) is an amazing substance with fantastic properties as a general purpose thing to make things out of.

    MOST of these functions have to do with
    - flexibility
    - impermeability to water, grease, etc
    - durability
    - weight (or specifically, the lack of it)
    - cost and cost of manufacturing.

    Plastic IS NOT INTRINSICALLY EVIL. There's a reason most people regard paper straws as nearly worthless shit, for example. And why un- or barely-coated paper cups are garbage for

    • You're right, it's kind of a fantastic material.

      I think the idea of a plastic that breaks down in sunlight and oxygen feels satisfying in terms of environmentalism but as you point out, it makes it nearly useless.

      I wonder if the "degradable plastics" should instead look for a plastic that degrades quickly in the presence of a reagent. Ideally the output soup could be refined into more plastic. Even more ideally is a reagent that's present in the environment but at low enough concentrations that the plastic

    • How long are you holding on to disposable drinking cups?

      If it lasts for more than 30 minutes, you're done using it. And maybe you can check my math, but I think a week is a tad longer than 30 minutes.

      • So you think disposable drinking cups are produced the moment they fill them with soda?

        This plastic breaks down in the presence of OXYGEN and LIGHT.

        That would mean from the moment you create it at a factory somewhere, it's beginning to break down. It continues to break down in the warehouse where it's stored to be shipped, in the truck taking it to the local fast food restaurant, and the whole while it's sitting on a shelf waiting to be used.
        My guess is that in most cases, that spans far more than a week.

        • So you think disposable drinking cups are shipped and stored without packaging?

          In reality, they're shipped and stored in a cardboard box. Those happen to be opaque, thus blocking LIGHT.

          Also, it's not light in general. It's sunlight. It's the UV in sunlight that breaks down the plastic, which means keeping them in any interior space would be sufficient to prevent degradation.

  • You buy a fancy new gadget, it comes in a cardboard box. Inside you can use this plastic packaging now, since it is dark. But not sure what the advantage of plastic is over a good organizing carton. Waterproof?
  • I think it makes more sense to create some sort of bag dispenser that keeps the bags in a dark environment until they're needed. The number of bags flying around the streets is evidence that we need to have something that degrades far more quickly. Same with plastic bottles—just paint them with something that will flake off as they're banged around after they get tossed out a window or whatever.

    I'm sure there are challenges to be solved there, but this could really change the game for a lot of single-

    • It may not require a special dispenser. If it's the UV in sunlight that causes it to break down (which is likely), then the windows in a typical supermarket are sufficient protection for the bags.

  • Back then, building dome shaped buildings was a big thing. The dome building community was mostly folks concerned about the ecology. It was ironic that these folks, the same ones who spoke out about about plastics lasting for centuries, not breaking down and polluting the Earth, were at the same time crying how hard it was to find building materials for their domes that would last when exposed to the outdoors.
    • Environmentalism as practiced is more about emotion and romanticism than about logic and reason. And a whole lot of grifters preying on it for political or financial reasons. It should surprise no one that environmentalism paints itself into silly corners this way.

  • ... develop a plastic that breaks down in contact with a recyclable solvent.

    • I think I see your point that improving the efficiency of current plastics recycling would be a better benefit overall. Yet take a walk alongside any interstate roadway, and see exactly the type of consumer plastics that never make it to recycling and thus are left to degrade and leave microplastics in their wake.

      The more options in plastics chemistry there are, the better.

      • by vivian ( 156520 )

        The solution for that is harsher penalties for littering.

        • Of course the authoritarian approach would be to treat the symptoms rather than the actual problem, with harsher penalties for unenforceable laws.

          You could give your solution a nice jingoistic name, such as the 'War On Littering".

          Meanwhile maybe inventing formulas for plastics better suited to their practical application would actually provide a benefit to society.

  • Like don't we saw this kind of "news" evey other year ?

  • Reminds me of the old SF book: "Mutant 59 The Plastic Eaters" https://www.goodreads.com/book... [goodreads.com]
    • I read some old scifi like this from the same era but it was the flipside, all good. There was a novella I read where people had developed a form of macrophages that could perform functions, like break down plastics or extract iron from the ground. I think even build stuff after searching the area like a swarm. It was a very long time ago but the first story like you plastic eaters I wrote I was able to go, 'oh yeah, what if...' There were some very forward thinking people back then. Now all publishers wan
  • The key point is someone has discovered how to make a plastic that can decompose, but not into micropastic pieces. It's a fucking start. Slanting off the article, scientists didn't suddenly invent the MRI; someone first looked at nuclear spin and came up with NMR. So maybe someone can riff off of this and come up with plastics based on this with better decomposition characteristics. This is potentially excellent depending on the peer review goes and whether it can be expanded on.
  • So what? If you've ever left anything plastic out in the california sun, you know it don't last long.

  • Novel Plastic Disintegrates In a Week In Sunlight and Oxygen

    Made me think of this article, Scientists accidentally create mutant enzyme that eats plastic bottles [theguardian.com], which made me think of this novel, Mutant 59: The Plastic-Eaters [amazon.com] ...

  • This is a bad thing. Plastics don't biodegrade. They just get broken into ever smaller pieces which lets them leech endocrine disrupting chemicals into the environment faster. The smaller pieces makes it easier for the plastic to enter to food web, which is why you have about a credit card's worth of micro plastics in you right now.

    The thing of it is, we already have a material that can take the place of plastic and is actually biodegradable. Cellophane is made from cellulose. It's versatile, simple to ma

    • If you RTFA, you'll find that this plastic doesn't break down into microplastics, which is 1) what you're complaining about, and 2) the new thing about this plastic.

      Also, it's difficult to make rigid things out of cellophane, the process of making cellophane isn't exactly clean, and cellophane thrown into a typical garbage dump breaks down into methane, which is rather bad from a climate change perspective.

  • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Tuesday July 13, 2021 @04:10PM (#61579377)

    What's wrong with ALuminium? It works for beer, it can work for other drinks too.

  • ...on landfill which keeps plastics in dark methane.

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