Cooking a delicious risotto and making plastics are actually very similar processes. In both, ingredients come together and are heated to create a product, but current recipes for synthesizing ...

Most things fall apart in water. Paper, cardboard, and many eco-friendly alternatives to plastic turn soft and useless the moment they get soaked. Researchers have now created a biodegradable material ...

A Japanese research team has created a plastic that breaks down in seawater, leaving no microplastics or toxins—just safe, natural elements. (CREDIT: 2025 RIKEN) Plastics are everywhere—from your ...

Billions of tons of plastic waste clutter our world. Most of it has accumulated on the ground and in the oceans or disintegrated into tiny particles known as microplastics that pollute the air and the ...

Even when biodegradable plastics are made from plants rather than fossil fuels, their environmental footprint extends far beyond the end of life. Growing corn, sugarcane, or other feedstocks at ...

That trait, which makes a coffee lid or a fishing float so useful, also turns plastic into a long-term guest in places it was never invited. Unrecovered fragments collect across ecosystems, and they ...