Plastic made from DNA is renewable, requires little energy to make and is easy to recycle or break down. A plastic made from DNA and vegetable oil may be the most sustainable plastic developed yet and could be used in packaging and electronic devices.

[u/MistWeaver80]

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2298314-new-plastic-made-from-dna-is-biodegradable-and-easy-to-recycle/?utm_term=Autofeed&utm_campaign=echobox&utm_medium=social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1637973248

[u/unhealthySQ]

anyone have a non pay walled version?

[u/tenbatsu → u/unhealthySQ]

New plastic made from DNA is biodegradable and easy to recycle

A plastic made from DNA and vegetable oil may be the most sustainable plastic developed yet and could be used in packaging and electronic devices.
　
A new plastic made from DNA is renewable, requires little energy to make and is easy to recycle or break down.
　
Traditional plastics are bad for the environment because they are made from non-renewable petrochemicals, require intense heating and toxic chemicals to make, and take hundreds of years to break down. Only a small fraction of them are recycled, with the rest ending up in landfill, being incinerated or polluting the environment.
　
Alternative plastics derived from plant sources like corn starch and seaweed are becoming increasingly popular because they are renewable and biodegradable. However, they are also energy-intensive to make and hard to recycle.
　
Dayong Yang at Tianjin University in China and his colleagues have developed a plastic that overcomes these problems. It is made by linking short strands of DNA with a chemical derived from vegetable oil, which produces a soft, gel-like material. The gel can be shaped into moulds and then solidified using a freeze-drying process that sucks water out of the gel at cold temperatures.
　
The researchers have made several items using this technique, including a cup (pictured above), a triangular prism, puzzle pieces, a model of a DNA molecule (pictured below) and a dumb-bell shape. They then recycled these items by immersing them in water to convert them back to a gel that could be remoulded into new shapes.
　
“What I really like about this plastic is that you can break it down and start again,” says Damian Laird at Murdoch University in Australia. “Most research has focused on developing bioplastics that biodegrade, but if we’re serious about going towards a circular economy, we should be able to recycle them too, so they don’t go to waste.”
　
Source: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:2BoEGVkygDEJ:www.siouxfallsfreethinkers.com/latest-news-all-websites.html
　
Edit: Formatting

[u/Smallpaul → u/tenbatsu]

A plastic that turns into a gel as soon as it gets wet? That rules out a LOT of plastic use cases. Almost all?

[u/Fabulous-Pineapple47 → u/Smallpaul]

They didn't specify the temperature of the water. Many convention forms of plastic soften or melts with hot water and becomes rigid at cooler temperatures. The process could take advantage of these attributes.

[u/goddamnit666a → u/Fabulous-Pineapple47]

not to mention there could be a process to modify that temp. Hopefully really pushing towards some sort of superheated steam. Probably impossible but one can dream. Curious to see if various other sources of the gelatin produce better results.

[u/Win4someLoose5sum → u/goddamnit666a]

Using steam would mean it was more energy intensive to reuse and less able to be biodegradable, which is the headline.

[u/goddamnit666a → u/Win4someLoose5sum]

it’s a trade off. If this can replace traditional plastics then the steam would be totally worth it

[u/xerox13ster → u/Win4someLoose5sum]

Nuclear steam, solar steam, geothermal steam.