Plastic

The bananas that we buy in stores grow off of a central trunk-like structure, known as the pseudostem. And while that part of the plant is typically discarded during harvesting, it may soon find use in a plastic that biodegrades and is recyclable.

Take a walk along the canal in Amsterdam’s Westerdok district, and you may see an unsightly mess of waste gathered at the edge of the canal. What you’re seeing is the work of a new bubble barrier, designed to stop plastic waste flowing out to sea.

BioBag World Australia and IG Fresh Produce have come up with an alternative to polyethylene wrap that can be used to keep cucumbers fresh.

The vast majority of plastic waste can’t be recycled, meaning it ends up in landfills or the ocean. To help curb the problem, researchers at Berkeley Lab have now designed a new type of plastic that can apparently be reduced right back to its molecular parts, before being remade over and over.

Most water in stores today comes in bottles made from petroleum-based plastic. After drinking the contents, too many of these bottles become a pollution problem. Cove is looking to change that with the launch of its biopolymer-based water bottles.​

The Ocean Cleanup barge is currently on its way to tackle the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but it never hurts to find ways to reduce plastic before it gets into the sea. In that vein, Danish beermaker Carlsberg has announced the Snap Pack, a simple alternative to plastic six-pack rings.

A PhD student at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, has come up with a way to turn waste coffee into biodegradable coffee cups. It hinges on a process which converts mannose, the prevalent sugar in the grounds, into lactic acid which can in turn be used to make biodegradable plastics.

Single-use plastic straws are a massive environmental problem, with increasing calls to ban the ubiquitous plastic drinking tubes. At least one major source of the problem has heard these calls, with McDonald's committing to find more environmentally-friendly alternatives.

​​We’ve got a huge plastic problem and drinking straws play no small part. Startup FinalStraw is on a mission to limit our use of these single-use strands of plastic, offering a reusable alternative that packs down into a case not much bigger than a cigarette lighter.​

Other than water, concrete is the most widely used material on the planet so it's unsurprising that scientists are working to make it safer and stronger. A team recently discovered a technique that uses irradiated plastic bottles to make a new concrete up to 20 percent stronger.

You might think that the uninhabited Henderson Island sitting in the middle of the Pacific would be relatively pristine. Here scientists have found a nasty surprise, however, discovering the highest density of plastic waste to be reported anywhere on the planet.

The Ocean Cleanup is due to begin clearing up the Great Pacific Garbage Patch in 2020. To get a better idea of what will be required, the Dutch foundation last year went for a close up look. It's now begun sizing up the task from the air and initial findings are that it's worse than thought.