New wood-based bioplastic
Plastics have gone from being one of the greatest allies of human beings to being one of their greatest enemies.
This is due to harmful that can be for nature, as well as the limited availability of resources to manufacture it. Consequently, it is common to see how alternatives to plastic are proposed, such as this one created with wood and totally biodegradable. A team of researchers from Yale University has created a fully biodegradable plastic obtained from wood dust. Using a biodegradable solvent to reduce it to a suspension of organic polymers and cellulose entangled with hydrogen at the nanoscale. The result is a bioplastic good enough to compete with conventional plastics.
Among the experiments that the bioplastic was subjected to, it was worth burying it underground for a period of time to see how the material evolves. While a conventional plastic takes thousands of years to degrade, the bioplastic created by the researchers ended up fractured in two weeks and within three months it had completely degraded. The material, they say, is also good at offering resistance and therefore being useful as a container. It has good mechanical properties to contain liquids and resist ultraviolet light, two essential issues when replacing the traditional plastic used in packaging. According to the team of researchers, bioplastic could be used for all kinds of uses, from the creation of bags or containers to the construction of buildings or vehicles. Of course, at the moment it is only a test and it remains to be seen how effective it is to build it en masse. The study on the feasibility of the project has so far been published in Nature.
Over the last few years, different alternatives to traditional plastic have emerged or at least reduce its use. Where it is being tested the most is with new packaging, such as the spherical and edible bottle or the Coca-Cola paper bottle. Biology is also testing enzymes that speed up the recycling process.
On the other hand, different organizations and government administrations are increasingly banning the use of plastics. The European Union and China for example seek to end disposable plastics. Others while cleaning the oceans of all that we dump into them.
