> can be water stabilized with hydrophobic coatings

So when they make takeout containers out of this it's going to be coated with... something. I am suspicious of all these coatings they're slapping on compostable food containers these days.

these plastics that will break down are designed to fix the problems of plastics... which problems are that plastics break down. We only need for plastics to break down more because they've already broken down, into microplastics and god knows what else.

I want to go in the other direction, plastics that simply don't break down, ever. Plastic laundry baskets with handles that keep being handles. Slick looking rubbery objects that don't turn into a sticky mess. We never thought of plastics as a pollutant because we thought plastics wouldn't break down. Make it so.

I can't tell if this is similar to PHA or not, but that's a plastic you can buy for 3d printing today that is touted to break down in seawater. https://www.fabbaloo.com/news/pha-colorfabbs-fully-biodegrad...

This is their site: https://colorfabb.us/filaments/materials/pha-filaments

The sooner the cost of plastics actually reflect their true cost to society (which is basically infinite if they cause genetic damage), the sooner we get viable replacements.

Interesting that this is a thermoplastic - my first question is how it performs as a 3D printer filament?