Grapevine cellulose makes stronger plastic alternative, biodegrades in 17 days
79 comments
·September 14, 2025mrmincent
I would kill for this for when I’m buying fresh produce at the shops. Right now I just raw dog the produce into my basket as putting 4 apples into a plastic bag to ease the weighing and transport home seems like a selfish thing to do to the environment, but something that starts to break down soon after that sounds great.
latexr
Why don’t you bring plastic bags from home? They are very much reusable, you don’t have to throw them out. They are also quite easy to fold into small shapes and keep on you, or your car, or whatever. I have plastic bags which have endured for literal years. I also decided early on that if I forget to bring a bag, I either do without or have to go back to get one. You start remembering really fast after a few times of forcing yourself to go back.
Another thing you can do is just take a cardboard box from some product in the store. This may depend on country, but where I live the shops leave products on their transport boxes on the shelves. Walking around the store I can usually find one empty box, or maybe one almost empty that I can move the products from into a similar box next to it. Then I just take the box and use it to transport my groceries. Stores just throw those boxes out anyway, so they don’t care if you take them (I have asked). At this point it’s a bit of a game for me, to guarantee I always find a box. I have a personal rule never do anything that would make the lives of the workers harder in the process.
nielsbot
I quit using bags for produce--I just put the produce in my basket or cart and then straight into the checkout bag on my way out of the store.
The exception is small loose produce like snap peas.
weaksauce
the places around here are using compostable plastic bags. not sure what it's made of but it can be composted in municipal facilities according to the bag. one downside is they are green tinted and harder to see what is in there but if it removes some of the plastic killing the ocean then i'm for it... assuming it's not a plastic that degrades into microplastics.
mook
> it can be composted in municipal facilities according to the bag
Note that "according to the bag" is very different from "according to your municipality"; my understanding is that most places actually can't handle them, and they might need to divert your compost to the landfill if it has too much of those plastic bags. They can be composed under certain conditions, but whether the facility your municipality uses has those is unclear.
See also "flushable" wipes that must not be flushed down the toilet.
jfim
I'd assume those bags would be okay considering they break down after a few days of holding compostable materials, and frequently make a mess in the compost bin. The "compostable" cutlery is definitely not compostable under normal household situations though.
yellowapple
> See also "flushable" wipes that must not be flushed down the toilet.
That really should be prosecuted for false advertising. Just because I can physically flush Orbeez down the toilet doesn't mean it's safe to do so.
throw101010
Most of these at least in my region are made from cornstarch. They decompose well/without "microplastics" but only under correct conditions.
Home composts aren't usually meeting these, their temperature isn't going high enough for full decomposition and you can have traces of polymers left behind. I throw them in the trash for compostable waste because thankfully my collectivity collects these to generate biogas and my guess is they do end up in much larger/managed composts where they can fully decompose.
nielsbot
I thought it was all PLA:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingeo
I think there's also "biodegradable" plastic which has cornstarch in it which allows bacteria to degrade it, but that's not the same thing?
kjkjadksj
I just threw one of those into my compost pile last month and it’s still there. No clue how long it’s supposed to take.
vkou
Compostable plastics don't compost if you just throw them in a compost heap, you need to compost them in high-temperature conditions.
ars
> but if it removes some of the plastic killing the ocean then i'm for it
It doesn't. The plastics in the ocean don't come from your grocery store. They come from fishing gear and from places without municipal trash service.
Honestly? It's basically greenwashing, it doesn't actually do anything at all. No one ever composts this things, and landfilling or incinerating a bag does not harm the environment.
nerdponx
Bring a cloth bag to put the apples in after checkout.
hedora
I’d guess paper would work fine for that purpose, except that it’s harder for the checkout person.
squigz
Why not use a fabric bag?
Either way good on you
koolala
Would be nice to have bags like that with their weight printed on them that machines trust.
bschwindHN
Where I live they have scales that tare at the beginning as part of the process of using your own bag.
ars
The plastic bag also prolongs the life of the produce, which is the main reason I want it.
Wasting produce is much worse for the environment than wasting a bag. After all if you don't litter the bag, throwing it out is pretty harmless.
jay_kyburz
we use these fresh and crisp bags. They sound like a gimmick but they really do work. We reuse a bag for months until its full of holes and not doing its job well anymore.
https://www.woolworths.com.au/shop/productdetails/2824/fresh...
blamestross
Ironically i only use the produce bags to wrap raw chicken and beef in an entirely different section.
danpalmer
I already use cellulose based bags for my compost waste, and they only stay reliable for about 3 days of usage after something is put in them. This makes them a huge pain to use. I think they also degrade quite a bit (i.e. shorter lifespan in use) after just a few months because each new roll of bags seems better at the beginning.
exabrial
Yeah that’s the problem. Plastic solves a logistics problem, not a structural problem.
Are your Twinkies stuck in a hot truck in Texas for a week? No problem!
loktarogar
It doesn't _only_ solve long-term logistical problems. Plastics are used for things like takeout containers, drink cups and straws, amongst others - things that are only needed for a short time.
PunchyHamster
All of those need to hold hot and wet things for long enough without contaminating them.
yellowapple
What contaminants would result from cellulose-based plastics like in the article? I'd guess probably things that'd at worst make the hot and wet thing taste bad, no?
loktarogar
Agree, but I don't see any mention of that in the article, so I don't have enough information to argue for that.
I'm sure we can agree though that having 17-day decomposing plastics that don't contaminate with heat and water is a good thing, so I hope it is that.
exabrial
Is your shipment of drink containers stuck in a hot truck in Texas for a month? No problem! They’re plastic
loktarogar
My point is it doesn't have to be a complete solution to replacing plastic to be able to have some benefits to replacing some plastics.
You can have local manufacturing processes so that it doesn't have to get stuck in a truck in Texas for a month.
And there'll still be uses for the long lived plastics. You don't have to use one plastic for everything - like we don't today.
Building a box that can last for centuries when you're only going to use it for 25 minutes and toss it is pretty wild if you think about it.
red369
I don't know much about this area at all, but it seems like it would be neat to have a plastic that stood up well to heat and moisture, but you could leave it soaking in some petrol/diesel/oil liquid, and it would melt into that and leave you with something still useable.
As I write this, it sounds like I'm just describing something like petrol in a solid form at room temperature. Perhaps there's something a little less far-fetched that people are working towards?
ars
> it sounds like I'm just describing something like petrol in a solid form at room temperature
That's what plastic IS. That's why it sounds like it, because plastic is in fact solid hydrocarbon.
So not only is it not farfetched, it exists today, which is also why incinerating plastic for energy is the best possible way to dispose it. You remove the plastic from the world, you reduce the amount of oil pumped for fuel, and you get to use the oil you do pump, twice! Once for plastic, and again for fuel.
It's one of those environmental slam dunks with zero downsides. (Before you ask: Modern incinerators do not release any toxins from burning plastic, none.)
yellowapple
> It's one of those environmental slam dunks with zero downsides
In relation to directly burning oil for fuel, yeah. In relation to other disposal methods, there's still the pretty major downside of being dependent on a non-renewable resource, in addition to…
> (Before you ask: Modern incinerators do not release any toxins from burning plastic, none.)
Greenhouse gas emissions are still an issue, though, no? Or do the incinerators capture that?
PaulHoule
Polyolefin plastics like
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypropylene
and even
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polystyrene
are "solid hydrocarbons" but most plastics are more complex than that. One reason we quit burning trash in many places is the presence of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyvinyl_chloride
which produces HCl which eats the incinerator. [1] Sure you can build a chemically tougher incinerator and add lime but practically stripping toxins from incinerators is a function of building a stripper tuned to whatever toxins are expected to be in the particular waste and frequently adding something that reacts with them. You can't really "burn up" heavy metals and certain other poisons and those either go up the stack or are part of the ash that has to be disposed of.
A technology you hear about more than you hear about real implementations is "chemical recycling of plastics" through pyrolysis which implement more or less controlled combustion and captures petrochemical molecules that can be used either for fuel or to make plastics and other chemicals: these manage to capture or consume most of the products but some of the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons that are produced when you burn plastic are practically drugs that cause cancer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benzo(a)pyrene
[1] Plenty of others contain oxygen: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyethylene_terephthalate or nitrogen such: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acrylonitrile_butadiene_styren... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon
kortilla
How do these systems handle the extra crap on the plastic?
par1970
So do we already do this? And if not, why not?
lazide
Petrol is really quite harsh and includes cancerous chemicals like benzene in sizable quantities. It’s not something you can soak something in and then use to expose to food.
Diesel and other oils tend to be (somewhat) less bad - but there are many oils in food which are nearly identical, and hence anything which breaks down in those situations is likely to breakdown while in food contact too.
senthil_rajasek
I want my produce wrapped in this plastic not the forever plastic. Maybe the bio-degradable plastic has it's use cases for other special purpose packaging with a very short self life.
kevin_thibedeau
They used to make it work with waxed paper. There's no reason why that can't be used for a large proportion of food packaging again.
amanaplanacanal
I assume that anything sold today as waxed paper has plastic in on it, but I don't really know.
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gerdesj
This is a novel material with a set of properties and a production "story" that looks rather cool - recycled vines.
If those parameters meet the requirements for a material that you need to use then cool. Use it. I don't see any attributes in this article, which is fine but "stronger than ..." is a bit weak.
The biodegradeable thing is probably going to be key if this stuff can hold hot liquids without poisoning the imbiber or can make plackey bags without falling to bits within seconds.
weaksauce
they linked to the study... https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2025/fb/d5fb0...
> These films exhibit a transparency of 83.70–84.30% mm−1 and a tensile strength of 15.42–18.20 MPa. They biodegrade within 17 days in soil at 24% moisture content. These films demonstrate outstanding potential for food packaging applications. Our research approach of repurposing agricultural byproducts to create high-value products helps reduce plastic waste, conserve the environment, and provide economic benefits to farmers.
on the lower end of plastics but might be fine for this application: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/3-Tensile-strength-and-i...
seems comparable to LDPE which i think the common bags are made from.
null
kleton
The major innovation of this paper seems to be a rayon process that uses less harsh chemicals than the current viscose and lyocell processes.
AngryData
That is neat, but not breaking down quickly is why we use it so often and why we find it so useful. We already have and use a ton of cellophane, but stores and producers avoid it in favor of plastic because plastic doesn't meaningfully degrade in the store or warehouse even if climate control conditions are shitty.
cmrdporcupine
Vitis riparia (wild grapevine endemic to the whole eastern side of North America, grows like a weed all over extremely disease resistant and cold hardy) and hybrids with it also produce gum arabic from their spring pruning wounds: https://agresearchmag.ars.usda.gov/2015/dec/grape/
Combined with the high sugars in the fruit and this cellulose things, overall an extremely useful plant.
SubiculumCode
Biodegrades into what? Microplastics?
Havoc
Now just ship it before oil industry wakes up and lobbies this to death
AfterHIA
This is why I'm constantly asking: why aren't we planting vineyards in the Wasatch Front? Silicon Slopes didn't work out but can we at least farm some effing grapes?
Modified3019
Here in Oregon, vineyards and especially hop yards are being taken out, demand for alcohol overall is down, and same goes for the related tourism.
wyre
I don’t know SLC very well but I’d guess it’s a combination of water consumption, and a bad value:land ratio because the wine won’t be good.
PaulHoule
I don't think there are good or bad wine growing regions as much as there are places where people have figured out how to make good wines. The Finger Lakes had a bad reputation once but people figured out Rieslings and some more affordable whites that reputation changed. More recently it was famous for soda-pop sweet wines like Red Cat but I've had some dry reds lately that weren't as bad as what I had 20 years ago.
People are making progress in Utah too
AfterHIA
It was a rhetorical question.
kulahan
Despite there being many great breweries in that region, most people shy away (initially) from a state run by a prohibition-style religion. Probably illogical, but definitely real in my experience.
What about paper bags? In the UK retailers have to charge for single use plastic bags. Clothes retailers hand out strong paper bags for free, and charge for plastic.
Supermarkets charge for plastic bags. Paper bags for fruit and veg work well. They also provide quality reusable bags that cost a small amount (£1 or so), and people actually reuse them.