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Fossil fuel-based plastic is also kind of immortal. These materials do not break down efficiently in the environment and end up sitting in landfills for hundreds and thousands of years; or they are burned with other trash, releasing toxic gas into the environment.

For example, single-use straws made of traditional plastics can take up to 200 years to degrade on land or in the ocean. However, single-use straws made of PHA will degrade in just 90 days when buried in soil and 180 days in the ocean.

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PHA has been found to be one of the only bioplastics that will properly and efficiently break down in the ocean. Products made of PHA are denser than water, which means PHA is more likely to sink compared to other plastics. The soil at the bottom of the ocean helps with the biodegradation process and allows for the PHA to decompose faster than if it were to be free-floating. According to studies, the rate of degradation depends on the surface area of the product. Smaller products, such as straws, take just six months to disappear.

Additionally, if PLA products are recycled, they must be separated as they will contaminate the recycling process. When tossed in the trash, PLA products can take 100 to 1000 years to completely degrade. Despite their marketing, this effectively makes PLA just as bad as traditional plastics.

In recent years, a handful of startups have emerged to address the single-use plastic pollution problem. Companies like Full Cycle and Genecis focus on using food waste and agricultural byproducts to make PHA raw material. Refork developed a single-use fork by blending wood flour, PHA polymer, and minerals. Even more, OMAO leads in the development of naturally biodegradable tableware made from PHA. OMAO has replaced over 5,000 pounds of traditional plastics by offering PHA straws. The company is also working on other single-use tableware products in an effort to make sustainability even easier for everyone.

Tough and easy to clean, stainless steel options for reusable food and beverage storage have multiplied in recent years. You can replace single-use cups, kitchen storage, lunch boxes, and more with this durable metal.

Keep in mind that anything you buy has an environmental footprint. Though longer lasting than plastic, things made from glass, metal, and so on still take energy to make and transport. For these swaps to make sense, you need to use them over and over and over again. Buying well-made, durable products will help ensure you get the most use from whatever you choose.

There are many easy swaps we can all make that will help begin to cut plastic pollution. As more of us demand non-plastic options from the companies we buy from, the amount of plastic being mindlessly produced and tossed will finally begin to decline. Start with some manageable first steps that can cut down your plastic use significantly.

Use plastic-free beverage containers. A long-lasting water bottle means you never need to buy a bottled drink or use a plastic straw. Bringing your own reusable cup to your favorite coffee shop means you can skip the cup, lid and straw.

Switch to non-liquid soaps. Liquid soaps, shampoos, and detergents have added enormous amounts of plastic waste to the environment. Look for bar soap and a shampoo bar for the bathroom, and opt for powders packed in recyclable containers for the laundry and kitchen.

The humble single-use plastic water bottle has become a powerful symbol at the heart of the debate. Bottles used for beverages like water and soft drinks are typically made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET). And according to a European Commission study, PET bottles and their lids are some of the most commonly found items among ocean debris.

Materials with enhanced structure derived from crustaceans and seaweed could be part of a next-generation answer to the challenge of replacing petroleum-based plastic films, according to new research from North Carolina State University.

The biopolymer composites are about four times stronger than agarose films alone, the research shows, and also resist E.coli, a commonly studied bacterium. The paper also showed that a sheet made from biopolymer composite films greatly degraded after a month underground, while, for comparison, a common plastic sandwich baggie remained completely intact after the same period underground.

Abstract: The replacement of synthetic plastics with biodegradable alternatives made from abundant and sustainable raw materials is a challenge of high societal importance. We report a class of high-performance multifunctional composite films made of nano- and microscale reinforced naturally sourced biopolymers. These films are made of an agarose matrix reinforced with hierarchically branched soft dendritic colloids (SDCs) from chitosan. Owing to the highly entangled hierarchical network of the SDC nanofibrils, the reinforced composite has excellent performance with more than 4 higher toughness than non-reinforced agarose, high visible light transmittance, improved hydrostability, and remarkable bactericidal activity. Thus, these reinforced biopolymer composites could match or exceed the excellent mechanical, barrier, and optical properties of common synthetic polymer films. We also demonstrate the soil biodegradability of this composite material in a controlled environment. The results suggest a universal strategy for manufacturing natural-source composite materials that could serve as substitutes for petroleum-based plastics.

Back in 1907, Leo Baekeland invented a new material, Bakelite, that was the first true synthetic plastic, composed of molecules not found in the natural world. It was an amazing breakthrough. Bakelite was durable and heat resistant and could be molded into almost any shape. People called it "the material of a thousand uses" [source: Science History Institute].

For now, plastic objects are all around us, from the food containers and bottles of milk and soda that we buy at the supermarket, to the countertops in our kitchens and the linings of our cooking pans. We wear clothes fashioned from plastic fibers, sit on plastic chairs, and travel in automobiles, trains and airplanes that contain plastic parts. Plastics have even become an important building material, used in everything from insulated wall panels to window frames [source: American Chemistry Council]. We continue to find new uses for plastic all the time.

Our dependence upon plastic also has an increasingly serious downside, because we make so much of it, and throw so much of it away. Of the 9.1 billion tons (8.3 billion metric tons) of plastic that the world has produced since 1950, 6.9 billion tons (6.3 billion metric tons) has become waste, and only 9 percent of that has been recycled. The rest ends up in landfills and in the world's oceans, where plastic pollution is ravaging wildlife and washing up on beaches. About 40 percent of the waste is discarded packaging [source: Parker].

When single-use plastic bags first hit the scene, we had a choice: paper or plastic. Today, it's pretty much all plastic. And if you're not that hypervigilant person at the checkout, you'll find yourself walking home with a bag for each item.

You can get them festooned with patterns or printed with the name or your bank/gym/frozen yogurt shop. Everyone hands them out, and they come in canvas, woven plastic fiber, hemp, cotton and even leather. You'll find nylon ones that fold up into a pouch small enough to fit in your pocket. In reality, any type of bag will do, whether it's meant to carry groceries or not.

While some people are busy developing plastic substitutes, others are bent on making conventional thermoplastics biodegradable. How? By throwing in additives called prodegradant concentrates (PDCs). PDCs are usually metal compounds, such as cobalt stearate or manganese stearate. They promote oxidation processes that break the plastic down into brittle, low-molecular-weight fragments. Microorganisms gobble up the fragments as they disintegrate, turning them into carbon dioxide, water and biomass, which reportedly contains no harmful residues.

Search around for additive technologies and you'll come across the trade names TDPA (an acronym for Totally Degradable Plastic Additives) or MasterBatch Pellets (MBP). They're used to manufacture single-use plastics such as thin plastic shopping bags, disposable diapers, trash bags, landfill covers and food containers (including fast-food containers).

When added to polyethylene (the standard plastic bag material) at levels of 3 percent, PDCs can promote nearly complete degradation; 95 percent of the plastic is in bacteria-friendly fragments within four weeks [source: Nolan-ITU Pty]. While not strictly biodegradable ('bioerodable' is more like it), PDC-containing polymers are more environmentally friendly than their purer polymer cousins, which sit in landfills for hundreds of years.

Now scientists say it could help to produce a biodegradable plastic for furniture cushions, insulation, packaging and other products. Yep, researchers are revitalizing the idea of converting casein, the principal protein found in milk, into a biodegradable material that matches the stiffness and compressibility of polystyrene.

Casein-based plastic has been around since the 1880s, when a French chemist treated casein with formaldehyde to produce a material that could substitute for ivory or tortoiseshell. But although it's ideal for jewelry that even Queen Mary admired, casein-based plastic is too brittle for much more than adornment.

Scientists have found a way make the protein less susceptible to cracking, thanks to a silicate clay called sodium montmorillonite. Freezing sodium montmorillonite into a spongelike material called an aerogel, they infused the porous network of clay with casein plastic. The result? A polystyrene-type material that, when put in a dump environment, begins to degrade completely [source: The Economist]. The modern milk-based plastic doesn't crack as easily, thanks to that silicate skeleton, and they even made the stuff less toxic by substituting glyceraldehyde for formaldehyde during the process. 006ab0faaa