If this is feasible, the use of environmentally friendly plastic will become politically divisive.

Stories like this pop up all the time "Bugs eat plastics" "Plastics turned back into fuel" "Plastics reused into new objects"

None of it turns into any real solutions, and I can only assume it's a greenwashing campaign with a science veneer, by spreading the idea that eventually science will make plastics fully recyclable/reusable/compostable.

The greenwashing plastics/petroleum industry is preying on the idea that there's a solution on the horizon for the unsolvable problem of plastics recycling and reuse.

Please reduce or even eliminate plastics use, if possible.

Especially single use plastics.

Cellulose acetate is over 120 years old. This is just another version.

Skimmed the abstract and couldn't see how they define "salt water". Did not see it.

Theoretically, this has utility for shipping. So let's say you have a pallet of water bottles. The bottles themselves will likely stay more traditional plastics. The plastic wrapping the 32 pack's cardboard could potentially be this. The plastic wrap around the entire pallet of a bunch of stacks of those 32 packs? I... would probably still go traditional plastic, honestly.

Because a LOT of beverages are shockingly salty when you look at them (because salt is good and helps us retain water). If that is enough to even come close to triggering degradation then you lose the ability to store those bottles "indefinitely" and you drastically increase the risk that someone's bottle breaks in their hand while they are leaving the 7-11. Which... defeats the purpose of WHY we use plastic for all this. And... it is a lot cheaper to have "one" bottle factory rather than one for each type of beverage.

As for that outermost layer? I would honestly just be terrified of a loading dock in the winter. Salt the ever loving hell out of that to minimize ice growth. And then suddenly you have pallets falling apart because of "quick" degradation.

Don’t sweat on it.

Although this is good to hear, we could also just keep dumping PVA into our environment until an organism develops that can metabolise it and subsequently adapts to eat any kind of plastic ultimately rendering all plastics useless. Bonus points if metabolising the plastics releases toxic byproducts further ultra whopperfuck killing the bleeding piss out of everything that happens to be nearby

Edit: although I am grateful for the earnest replies, I would like to mention that I intended my post to be sarcastic

Will be branded "Clean Plastic" until they find the inevitable, terrible side-effect.

I hope this is useful and commercially viable enough to replace plastics, at least in part. Pullulan has been touted as plastic made from cellulose, but so far it's only been used in Listerine breath strips, as far as I know.

Probably funded by the American Institute for Corn Ubiquity in All Facets of Life Oh My God We Love Corn So Obsessed Please Buy

Does stuff like this actually end up being used though? Or is it just a "cool we made this" type of thing that goes nowhere

Unless you can serve food in it and toss it in the dishwasher without it melting or falling apart, it’s basically pointless.