Yeah, this specific bio-material probably doesn't make sense for moisture and dirt.
However, the bio-plastics made from shellfish leftovers (think: crab, lobster, shrimp) would be appropriate for this.
The problem with petroleum based products (Styrofoam, plastics) is that they are crazy cheap due to our oil based economy. At some point the economics of that industry will change, and with it the prevailing winds on using plastics as building materials.
I would welcome more products being made as sturdy as they used to be. Take for example, pooper scoopers. It's actually quite difficult to buy a scissor-style one made of any kind of metal (there's one which is 80ish USD and made of steel - sort of a vanity product). They're all plastic. They all break, some sooner than others. The one I picked up from my parents' house recently was used from about 1990 to 2003 (and left outdoors since), and performs better than any of the plastic ones we used. It's wood and aluminum, and probably was no more expensive than the plastic ones on offer today. We broke a 25 dollar scooper within a month, and the scooper we inherited will likely outlive yet another dog.
Additional sources of revenue for fisheries will increase the scope of which stocks are financially viable to destroy.
If world fisheries had shown that it was possible to control extraction such that we did not destroy stocks, then this would be a great way to meet a significant (~10%, it seems?) portion of world packaging plastics needs. However, it seems pretty clear that the fishing industry as a whole has any interest in ensuring sustainable production.
That's not sufficient macroeconomic justification to push the shellfish remains biofilm forward. See Cobra Effect [1].
This is reflexivity in action [2]. In the first year you start manufacturing this biofilm, your sentiment is true, it is using waste stream. In the Nth year, fisheries are collapsing shrimp stocks, flooding markets with shrimp to extract what used to be a waste stream to eke out ever decreasing margins in a vicious cycle.
Or you just consume the entirety of the waste stream and then stop because it's a low value marginal add on product that doesn't drive an industry. It's not like the demand for cow manure is driving us to create brand new herds simply to output more manure.
Right now what saves us from the cobra effect with such a biofilm is hydrocarbon-based plastics are cheaper than it and the distribution and manufacturing networks are built around them. I'd be perfectly content with no concerns if there are no subsidies tampering with such biofilms; let them organically develop their own markets, manufacturing networks and supply chains, and I completely agree with you that they will naturally stop.
If well-intentioned government subsidies aggressively push for using the waste stream however (about the only way I see such a biofilm ever ramping up beyond niche markets), then it is very difficult to conceive those policy makers calibrating to the same homeostatic outcome. That's not how the plastics industry works. The demand scale is on such a bonkers level that distorts normal incentives.
I always worry about such reflexivity when these breathless articles come out about alternative production-side solutions to our current plastics production-consumption matrix. It's way more complex and large than most people understand outside that industry.
If you compare the price/lb of shellfish vs the price/lb of plastic packaging, it's very hard to imagine any level of subsidy that would result in the tail wagging the dog.
If oil demand decreases enough, it should get more expensive. It seems counterintuitive, but so much of the supply chain depends on moving large amounts of oil, refineries selling different grades of molecules to different customers, and oil companies not having to pay to shut down old wells. Heh, just kidding on the last one, oil firms never pay to shut down wells, they just sell to small firms which can go bankrupt instead.
But the big complicated supply chain for petrochemicals can break at lower scale. Compare how freaked out the markets have gotten at Meta and Netflix for losing users while still being profitable, and you can see how financing could dry up before the wells do.
I doubt it’s enough to phase out plastics, but it might make alternatives more economically viable.
Wow, I didn’t know that refining, shipping, and access to global capital didn’t apply to KSA. Such a magical country.
They’re going to need that magic when the primary export collapses — or if it doesn’t, wet bulb temperatures in the Gulf make it literally unlivable. The $20 a barrel will be even harder to sustain in a protracted civil war, which is where they are headed if they don’t diversify enough.
However, the bio-plastics made from shellfish leftovers (think: crab, lobster, shrimp) would be appropriate for this.
The problem with petroleum based products (Styrofoam, plastics) is that they are crazy cheap due to our oil based economy. At some point the economics of that industry will change, and with it the prevailing winds on using plastics as building materials.
I would welcome more products being made as sturdy as they used to be. Take for example, pooper scoopers. It's actually quite difficult to buy a scissor-style one made of any kind of metal (there's one which is 80ish USD and made of steel - sort of a vanity product). They're all plastic. They all break, some sooner than others. The one I picked up from my parents' house recently was used from about 1990 to 2003 (and left outdoors since), and performs better than any of the plastic ones we used. It's wood and aluminum, and probably was no more expensive than the plastic ones on offer today. We broke a 25 dollar scooper within a month, and the scooper we inherited will likely outlive yet another dog.