Making plastics out of sodium, phosphorus, and guanidinium ions [1] which the link characterizes as a "strong organic base", which is designed to break down and so will do so not just in the ocean, suggests to me that there are enough engineering disadvantages the article is not talking about that we'll probably never see this in real life.
It's chemically quite distant from traditional plastics.
The ocean may not care about some extra sodium and phosphorus... and then again, if we made enough, maybe it would... but I'll graciously assume for now it wouldn't, but the other places this would inevitably end up breaking down would probably not appreciate the resulting mess. I have to imagine any quantity of this in a fire near humans would be a fairly substantial problem of some sort. I don't know exactly what would pop out but it's got some awfully "exciting" feedstock going in to it with that sodium and phosphorus.
The guys marketing these things are really hoping that you have forgotten the law of conservation of mass.
The ultimate problem with these dissolving plastics is that they are still plastic after they dissolve, it's just that they are invisible microplastics instead of visible objects. They largely aren't captured at WWTP and end up in the water supply.
Realistically? Taxes and tax enforcement. That’s really the only consistent and persistent way to change the incentives of the world’s economies. In most developed economies, the ultra wealthy are able to avoid paying their fair share, and the same goes for large corporations as well.
Without fairness, there’s really no easy way to talk about strategy.
I don't get how this phrase has got ao much traction from the people who are in support of various social safety net programs that are specifically designed to benefit those who don't pay their fair share.
If you and I split a pizza and I pay for none but eat half, is that fair? Even if I'm poor and your rich, that's not fair.
It might be right, it might be good but it's certainly not fair.
In the context of politicians rallying their base, it's meant to insinuate the actual antithesis of it's normal meaning. Furthermore, it's a subjective word that means different things to different people so politicians can appeal to everyone's internal definition of fair, which is usually making everyone that makes more money than them pay more.
It's a political slogan. It adds nothing to the actual discourse but it does get people out to vote!
I guess the only "intentionally obtuse" part of my comment was the "I don't get how this phrase has got so much traction..." part.
The "ultra-wealthy" and "corporations" pay plenty of taxes, they just pay it significantly different than you do so that if you want to compare W2s, it looks wrong but that's another disingenuous tool to con you into voting.
This isn't game changing? We ALREADY have biodegradable containers that degrade in salt water overnight and can be prevented from degrading with a coating that can then be breached by a scratch:
It's called paper. I've used paper products with a hydrophobic coating (which means plastic, consumers don't like wax coatings that much) for decades. They don't solve the problem, because the plastic coating still fills us with microplastics.
Maybe it cuts down on how much plastic is produced and thrown away, but we could have done this 20 years ago!
There's no conspiracy thwarting "game changing" research to maintain some status quo, though there ARE often political factions who push for maintenance of the status quo.
This is marketing. The people who write this stuff are marketers and they usually don't understand the research in the first place!
This is why, despite everyone insisting that there are hundreds of "This will revolutionize batteries" that everyone complains never materialize, we have actually seen them materialize as lithium batteries like doubling in capacity over a decade. The marketing material overpromised, though the research was fruitful.
It's chemically quite distant from traditional plastics.
The ocean may not care about some extra sodium and phosphorus... and then again, if we made enough, maybe it would... but I'll graciously assume for now it wouldn't, but the other places this would inevitably end up breaking down would probably not appreciate the resulting mess. I have to imagine any quantity of this in a fire near humans would be a fairly substantial problem of some sort. I don't know exactly what would pop out but it's got some awfully "exciting" feedstock going in to it with that sodium and phosphorus.
[1]: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/guanidinium#sectio...