NPR's Juana Summers talks with Regina Barber and Emily Kwong of Short Wave about biodegradable plastic, simulating growing crops on Mars, and how deer are disrupting caribou populations. It's time now ...

The study Biodegradable Innovations: Harnessing Agriculture for Eco-Friendly Plastics, published in the Journal of Xenobiotics, evaluates whether agriculture-based polymers can realistically replace ...

Strips of plain TPU (top) and "living" TPU (bottom) at different stages of decomposition over five months of being in compost. A new type of bioplastic could help reduce the plastic industry’s ...

The world has a big plastic problem that it's yet to fix. We're trying to reduce our reliance on plastic, but that's seemingly impossible in modern society. The material is too important for our daily ...

Biodegradable plastics (BPs) are widely promoted as eco-friendly alternatives to traditional plastics—but how “green” are they, really? As the world grapples with escalating plastic pollution, major ...

KAWANISHI-CITY, Japan, Feb. 25, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Environmental problems such as climate change, global warming, deforestation, extinction of species, water shortage etc. due to explosion of human ...

While biodegradable plastics currently account for 0.5% of the hundreds of millions of tons of plastic produced annually, a growing demand for the alternative reflects consumer awareness and corporate ...

Healthcare is awash in single-use plastics. In U.S. healthcare facilities alone, more than 2,800 tons of plastic packaging and products are thrown out every day. Few people are more aware of this than ...

A Lancaster County science fair champion has earned international honors for developing a fishing lure that won’t contribute to the problem of plastic pollution in waterways. Hempfield High School ...

Plastic that behaves like a sturdy fork on your picnic table and then quietly melts back into the soil sounds like science fiction, yet chemists are now doing something close by turning ordinary milk ...

It's time now for our regular science news roundup with our friends at NPR's SHORT WAVE podcast, Emily Kwong and Regina Barber. Hi, y'all. REGINA BARBER, BYLINE: Hi. EMILY KWONG, BYLINE: Hey. BARBER: ...