(plastic crinkles) (upbeat music) (audience applauding) (plastic crinkles) - Plastic is everywhere around us, and almost half of it's designed to be used once and then thrown away.

Very little gets recycled, and when it ends up in the environment, it can stick around for hundreds of years.

But what if we could come up with an alternative to single-use plastics?

(hand tapping) Something that's strong and malleable, easily recyclable, breaks down quickly and is a little bit sweet.

And that's "All Science.

No Fiction."

(bright upbeat music) (audience applauding) (objects rumbling) Developing a material that could replace single-use plastics is a lot like baking.

There's measuring, heating and mixing.

(metal clanking) - I'm a much more precise scientist than I am a baker.

When I bake, I sort of just throw whatever I have into the pan or the oven and see how it comes out.

Can't do that here.

- Finding the right combination of materials has taken years of work, but tackling our plastics problem has been something that Terra Miller-Cassman has been thinking about for even longer.

Before coming back to school, she had a job monitoring coastal plastics pollution.

- To be perfectly honest, I got really pissed off because it's everywhere and it was a huge problem.

So I got a little tired of just monitoring and creating reports on this problem that didn't seem to be getting addressed.

- One of the issues with single-use plastics is that their quality is just too good.

- The product that we make from them will last forever, but we throw it away.

And so the question is, "Could we dial back?"

Right, "Could we re-engineer single-use items "just good enough "and last long enough for the application?"

And then you don't need it to be any better than that.

- These Idaho researchers have created a new kind of material, one that's recyclable, reusable, and quickly breaks down in the environment.

- We're always thinking about, "Well, "what would the starting material be?"

Ideally, not a fossil fuel, so plant-based.

(sugar sprinkling) - The material they found that checked all the boxes is made from table sugar.

It's called isomalt.

- Isomalt is a sugar alcohol traditionally derived from beets.

You take the beets, you turn that into sucrose, and then you can turn that into isomalt.

- Isomalt is used to decorate cakes and, in the movies, to make smashable props, (glass shatters) like cups and glasses.

(glass shattering) - Whenever you see somebody jumping through a window and it breaks and they're not cut and they're not hurt, it's not because they're a superhero.

It is because when isomalt breaks, it looks like glass, but it's not sharp.

- But a plastic substitute that shatters like glass would make the world's worst fork.

(glass crunching) So Miller-Cassman looked for something else she could mix in to make the isomalt stronger.

She settled on cellulose and a little sawdust straight from the campus wood shop.

- Okay.

- The strength of the different combinations of ingredients is tested with this machine, which pushes down on the sample until it snaps.

- Yeah, now, we're cooking with fire.

- Running the same strength test on pure isomalt versus the sawdust composite shows just how much longer the mix holds up under pressure.

- Starting test.

- The difference is stark.

(machine clicking) - That it reinforced it so much to where we could dramatically change the properties of the isomalt.

That was pretty cool.

But you could just make something useful out of something that's just an edible sugar basically.

(gently chiming bells) - To understand why the isomalt mix works so well as a planet friendly plastic substitute, we need to journey back to high school chemistry.

(gentle upbeat music) Traditional plastics are polymers.

- A polymer is basically linking thousands of molecules together in a chain with really strong bonds.

These are covalent bonds.

- Covalent bonds are pretty permanent, kind of like glue.

(object tapping) It's the reason plastic is so hard to recycle.

The team's isomalt material, on the other hand, relies on hydrogen bonds to hold together.

It's strong as well, but more like magnet strong.

- They're friendly with each other basically.

They like to hold hands.

- And just like magnets, isomalt mix can be reused again and again.

In fact, it only takes a little water to break it down.

In the environment, it disappears quickly.

- There we go, that's what we wanted.

- You could just bury it and it would become nutrients for the soil.

- Add a biodegradable protective coating and the isomalt mix becomes waterproof plenty long enough for a single-use.

But what would you use it for?

Well, perhaps, whatever shape you can mold.

- One of the benefits of this project is everything that I work with smells really good.

(machine whirring) It smells like melting sugar, very sweet.

(machine thuds) - The extruder melts the isomalt mix and forces it into the awaiting mold.

- There we go.

This is going to be the flower.

Looks really good.

- The aim is to replace plates, cups, forks, party favors and decorations.

Basically, everything that would end up in the landfill after all the cake is gone.

- They sort of look and act like a ceramic.

So you could take this and make products out of it, which is the goal.

- The problems with plastics are widely known, and Philips says he's starting to see meaningful change.

- Yeah.

- I hear from a lot of companies that they're all putting money and resources into how to be sustainable in a real way, an authentic way.

So I think that's here to stay.

- Their vision is ambitious.

Isomalt from sugar beets grown in Idaho, sawdust from local sawmills.

- We could potentially keep the entire process local.

That would be the dream.

- And the beauty of this isomalt plastic substitute is that it could truly be a Pacific Northwest solution.

Unlike that plastic fork that came with your lunch, your support of OPB should never be tossed out.

- Isomalt.

- Our members are vital to the work we do.

Thanks and don't miss out on any of OPB's Science, Environment and Arts programs by subscribing to "OPB Insider" at opb.org/allscience.

- Ooh, shoot, I don't think it recorded.

- Oh, no.

- It literally didn't record.

- No.

- No.

- Do we have another one?

- Yeah.

- All right, good 'cause that felt like nothing at all.

- Okay.