HN Reader

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.

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.

Only three things in life are certain: taxes, death, and microplastics. And I’m not sure about the former.

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.

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.

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

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.

Looks like we can have plastic straws shamelessly now. And plastic cutlery as well.

Excited to never see this technology get used!

Pollution is still seen as some technical problem even in 2025 but im not convinced. I think for decades I’ve read about some miracle substance that is environmentally friendly and can replace trad plastics. Decades later still virtually no practical movement in the space can be seen.

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.

The fact we haven't globally banned single use plastic is incredibly stupid.

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.

"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".

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.

Best placement for this plastic is to be in a composite of other materials like cotton fiber.

I'm worried this will cause a buildup of plastic in arctic regions during the summer

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.