I prefer my fruit rollups in colors other than red, personally.I know that's not a fruit rollup there in the picture, but it looks a heck of a lot like a fruit rollup.
I'm not saying. I'm just saying...
One of the things that we point out in our summer material science workshops is that polymers might be the perfect material because they have good long-term stability, not corroding (though there are some UV issues involved, admittedly).
And then we immediately point out that polymers might not be the perfect material for exactly those same reasons. See, the polymers are going to be around far longer than we want them to be in many cases, sometimes even building up in the oceanic doldrums into gyres of debatable density.
But bioplastics, most of which are biodegradeable, tend to have the drawback that they require repurposing the production yield of agricultural land currently being used for - you know - feeding people. It would be far better if we could maybe take food waste that we already have, that we're just going to chuck into a landfill somewhere or - if we're lucky - maybe compost it.
That's just what a team of researchers from Italy have been working to do, producing plastics from spinach, rice, parsley, and cocoa pod husks...and apparently it works.
Check out the details over at IFLscience.com, iit.it, Science Alert, New Scientist, and the original ACS publication.
http://www.iflscience.com/chemistry/scientists-develop-bioplastic-food-scraps
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