Durable plastic gets a sustainability makeover in novel polymerization process

The "sustainability makeover" reads like it can in principle be recycled, and if we really want to we can make it from plants (though we likely wouldn't).

I don't have access to the full paper, but "Flexible and soft, the resulting material can be completely chemically recycled using heat and degraded by acid" doesn't inspire confidence that it would actually degrade well in nature. At least from that short description it does at least sound economically viable for deliberate recycling. At least with the right incentives.

They call it "bio-sourced material". Now I don't have a chemistry degree, but my amateur understanding is that most of the synthesis chains available here ultimately derive from oil. For example you can get DHF by catalyzing 1,4-butanediol on cobalt or aluminum oxide. Wikipedia lists a number of ways 1,4-Butanediol is made industrially, but they all boil down to oil product, natural gas, or the occasional "we mostly make this from oil, but sometimes ethanol is used instead". The most "bio-sourced" of those is via Butadiene, where wikipedia claims "While not competitive with steam cracking for producing large volumes of butadiene, lower capital costs make production from ethanol a viable option for smaller-capacity plants."

It reads like a nice material, but as usual temper your expectations

We've spent 100 years trying to make polymers that last forever, and we've realized that's not actually a good thing," Fors said.

Indeed not a good thing for continued profits and the cartel of planned obsolescence.