Plastic bags that dissolve in water

Article originally published in 2018:

The Chilean company SoluBag presented on July 24 a bag in plastic completely soluble in water. During this press conference, the director of Solu Bag, Roberto Astete, even split a small demonstration by dissolving one of his bags in a carafe of water before drinking it. To achieve this result, the engineers replaced the oil by a derivative of limestone rock and used as binder of the’alcohol polyvinyl (PVA), a polymer which dissolves entirely in water, explains the company. A recipe concocted from a Chinese technology for which SoluBag has recovered the exploitation rights.

“Our bags stay in nature for only five minutes, compared to 150 to 500 years for traditional plastic bags”, welcomes Roberto Astete, the director of SoluBag. The company also presented a more resistant canvas bag, which dissolves in hot water (the plastic one dissolves in cold water). “Now we can to recycle the bags in his saucepan or his washing machine”, added Roberto Astete.

No more expensive to manufacture

According to the company, these bags do not cost more to manufacture and can be adapted to current production lines: just change the formula. These new bags should be marketed from October in Chile. The country is also one of the first in Latin America to have banned the use of traditional plastic bags. Cups and cutlery using the same formula are also under study.

Eight million tons of plastic are dumped into the oceans every year, the equivalent of one garbage truck every minute. At the current rate, there will be 12 billion tons of plastic waste in nature by 2050.