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The next step is engineering a hydrophobic coating or other biodegradable packaging that offers an adequate level of resistance to accidental scratching for a particular application, and identifying applications that are tolerant to failure of the plastic or not exposed to salt water.

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>The next step is engineering a hydrophobic coating or other biodegradable packaging that offers an adequate level of resistance to accidental scratching for a particular application

then you're back to square one. you might as well just make the whole thing out of that material

If the hydrophobic material has different properties than the plastic, they can complement each other. For example, soda cans have an inner coating that eliminates a soda pop-aluminum interface, preserving flavor and protecting the structural integrity of the can.

By analogy, we can imagine sheets of this material where nearly all the mass is the degradable plastic, and a thin film of coating is enough to preserve it adequately for its purpose in the product where it’s being used.

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