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Wood waste becomes plastic that dissolves in the ocean

PubMed · 2026-05-12

Scientists turned a lignin byproduct from plant waste into a new biodegradable plastic and found that its physical shape, tiny sprayed particles versus a solid film, changes how fast it breaks down in the ocean, with particles degrading faster and more completely in deep seawater.

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The plastic was built from PDC, a compound derived from lignin, using an efficient one-step chemical reaction with no wasted atoms

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The resulting material is fully amorphous (non-crystalline) with a fracture stress of 10.34 MPa

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In deep seawater, sprayed microparticles reached about 30% biodegradation in 45 days, outperforming a solid hot-pressed film of the same material

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