A biofriendly new material made from barley starch blended with fiber from sugarbeet waste—a strong material that turns into compost should it end up in nature—has been created at the University of Copenhagen. In the long term, the researchers hope that their invention can help put the brakes on plastic pollution while reducing the climate footprint of plastic production.
This is actually a bigger deal than the headline suggests if the claims are to be believed. Hopefully the licensing isn’t too expensive for it to be widely adopted if manufacturing at scale is easy.
They don’t say how it degrades in water, but if it can degrade in ~2months outdoors then that’s actually pretty good.
Most biodegradable eco-plastic is a scam because it’s either only partially degradable, or only degradable in industrial facilities. If I can throw this packaging in my own compost bin then that would be a huge way to get rid of single-use plastic.