[jerf]

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.

[1]: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/compound/guanidinium#sectio...