{"id":215240,"date":"2025-06-02T14:06:44","date_gmt":"2025-06-02T19:06:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/scientists-create-biodegradable-plastic-alternative-thats-literally-alive"},"modified":"2025-06-02T14:06:44","modified_gmt":"2025-06-02T19:06:44","slug":"scientists-create-biodegradable-plastic-alternative-thats-literally-alive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/scientists-create-biodegradable-plastic-alternative-thats-literally-alive","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Create Biodegradable Plastic Alternative That\u2019s Literally Alive"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-create-biodegradable-plastic-alternative-thats-literally-alive.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Swiss scientists have created a new plastic-like material that\u2019s flexible, biodegradable, and even edible. The secret? It\u2019s still alive.<\/p>\n<p>The material, which was created by a team from Empa in Switzerland, manages to balance biodegradability with toughness and versatility \u2013 a feat that is far from easy in materials science.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers processed fibers from the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mycelium\">mycelium<\/a> (the root-like part) of the split-gill mushroom (<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Schizophyllum_commune\"><em>Schizophyllum commune<\/em><\/a>) into a liquid mixture, without actually killing them off or destroying their natural biological functions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Swiss scientists have created a new plastic-like material that\u2019s flexible, biodegradable, and even edible. The secret? It\u2019s still alive. The material, which was created by a team from Empa in Switzerland, manages to balance biodegradability with toughness and versatility \u2013 a feat that is far from easy in materials science. The researchers processed fibers from [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":718,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1506,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biological","category-food","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/718"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}