Plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours

Researchers in Japan have developed a plastic that dissolves in seawater within hours, offering up a potential solution for a modern-day scourge polluting oceans and harming wildlife.

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While scientists have long experimented with biodegradable plastics, researchers from RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science and the University of Tokyo say their new material breaks down much more quickly and leaves no residual trace.

At a lab in Wako city near Tokyo, the team demonstrated a small piece of plastic vanishing in a container of salt water after it was stirred up for about an hour.