Researchers In Japan Find An Alternative To Single Use Plastic

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Human civilization may sacrifice itself on the altar of convenience. We expose our every move to surveillance by governments and marketers because our cell phones are so convenient we can’t do without them. We use billions of single use plastic bottles because they are just so darn convenient. You slurp your beverage of choice, then toss the bottle away. Out of sight, out of mind. They all get recycled, don’t they?

Actually, no, they do not. According to The Ocean Cleanup Project, nearly 2 million metric tons of plastic waste enters the oceans every year from beaches and waterways. Much of it is single use beverage bottles, cups, and straws. Once they enter the oceans, they can take hundreds of years to break down, during which time they degrade into microplastics that get ingested by marine plants and animals. Microplastics have been found in the deepest parts of ocean and the tops of the highest mountains. They are in our bloodstreams, in breast milk, and in human placentas.

And yet, convenience wins out over common sense consistently. Several years ago, Bea Perez, head of sustainability for Coca-Cola, told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the company has no intention of abandoning single use plastic bottles. Why? It’s all the customers’ fault, apparently. They like the convenience of lightweight, recloseable bottles and the company is afraid to deny its customers what they want because it might lose market share. Is market share a reason to degrade the environment? If you are Coca-Cola, apparently the answer is yes.

An Alternative To Single Use Plastic

On April 9, 2025, the journal Scientific Adviser published a paper by researchers in Japan with this entertaining title — “Fully circular shapable transparent paperboard with closed-loop recyclability and marine biodegradability across shallow to deep sea.” The critical word in the title is “transparent.” Until now, only plastics derived from fossil fuel stocks have been clear enough to be used in the food industry. Think of Saran Wrap and other films used in packaging. Beverage containers are usually clear for similar reasons.

The strength and durability of plastic is hard to beat, but those same properties are exactly what make it an environmental nuisance. It lingers for hundreds of years in soils and waterways. And while biodegradable plastics or plastic alternatives exist, they often perform poorly in real world use.

According to Anthropocene Magazine, researchers in Japan have found a way to make a new paper-based material that could be an ideal replacement for some single use plastics. The millimeter thick paperboard behaves like plastic, but only when needed. It is strong, transparent, and shapeable, plus it can hold boiling water. But its most important feature is that it full degrades in less than a year once it settles to the ocean floor.

Researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology were able to strike a balance between performance and degradability with their new paperboard material which they call tPB — shorthand for “transparent paperboard.” They started with cellulose, the molecule that makes up plant cell walls. In addition to being used to make paper, cellulose can also used to make transparent cellophane sheets.

But cellophane films can only be made less than 0.05 mm thick because the chemicals used to solidify the cellulose solution don’t work with thicker sheets. The Japanese research team found a workaround to that problem by making a thick cellulose hydrogel. The process involves dissolving cellulose in an aqueous lithium bromide solution. Drying the hydrogel gave clear cellulose sheets that are one millimeter thick. The researchers then shaped those sheets to make cups and straws. A cup made from the transparent material could hold boiled water for over 3 hours with no leakage. When the researchers coated the cup with a plant-derived fatty acid salt, it became completely waterproof.

To test the degradability of the material in case of accidental release into the ocean, the researchers submerged paperboard sheets at sites located at four different ocean sites of varying depths. One was near a port at a depth of 2 meters, two were in waters around 750 and 850 meters deep, and the last one was submerged in the ocean at a depth of over 5,550 meters. The tests showed the tPB material fully decomposed in 300 days at deep ocean depths. The degradation was even faster in shallower depths because of warmer temperatures. Here is the abstract to the research study:

To mitigate marine pollution from single use plastics, it is crucial to transition to next-generation commodity materials that are derived from biomass and are recyclable and marine biodegradable even at abyssal depths in case of the accidental release to the ocean. Here, we develop an optically transparent millimeter-thick paperboard called transparent paperboard (tPB) through dissolution and coagulation of cellulose. The tPB is made entirely of pristine cellulose and compositionally identical to paper. A cup-shaped tPB can hold just-boiled water without an internal film coating because of its high wet tensile properties and anisotropic thermal properties. In addition, the spent tPB is material recyclable in a closed system, where all chemicals and water are also recyclable. Furthermore, the marine biodegradability of tPB across shallow to abyssal depths is confirmed by on-site degradation tests and metagenomic analyses. Hence, tPB is expected to serve as a key fully circular commodity material in sustainable societies of the future.

Is this a big deal? Yes it is. Global plastic production reached 400 million tons in 2022, with packaging and single use plastics accounting for a substantial amount of that total. The resulting waste ends up in landfills, incinerators, or the environment, where it contributes to environmental pollution. Plastic manufacturing releases planet warming greenhouse gases and other dangerous pollutants.

The emphasis on curbing plastic use is a reflection of global acknowledgement that recycling or repurposing existing plastics just won’t work. Global plastic production rose nearly 230-fold between 1950 and 2019, to more than 400 million tons a year, and is expected to quadruple from current levels by 2050. An estimated 40% of that is single-use plastic, which makes up the bulk of the world’s plastic waste. If there really is a viable alternative, that is good news for the Earth.