Biodegradable Material Innovations

Algae-derived bioplastics production with green microalgae suspension, polymer pellets, and translucent PHA film samples in a clean lab

Algae-Derived Bioplastics – The Ocean Already Grows the Material That Could Replace Its Worst Pollutant

Eight million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean every year. The organisms that have lived in that ocean for three billion years are, in a specific biochemical sense, already synthesizing the answer. Certain microalgae produce polyhydroxyalkanoates – PHAs – as a routine metabolic function: long-chain polymer molecules with properties that chemists classify as biodegradable thermoplastics….

Bio-programmable polymer packaging breaking down on schedule in a futuristic lab, showing plastic materials with a built-in molecular expiry date

Bio-Programmable Polymers – When Plastic Finally Gets an Expiry Date Built Into Its Molecules

Kriss J.2 months ago2 months ago26 mins

There is a yogurt container sitting somewhere in the Pacific right now. It has been there roughly forty years. The yogurt lasted about a week. The container will outlast every person alive today by several centuries – not because anyone needed it to, but because nobody built in a way for it to stop. That…