Disappearing Act
A San Diego businessman whose “hobby” is inventing products announced Wednesday that he had invented a biodegradable plastic that can be recycled.
Robert J. Petcavich unveiled his invention at a news conference at the San Diego Press Club. The new plastic, which is known by the trademark name Enviroplastic, is polymer-based and uses polyoxyethylene as the main ingredient, he said.
Petcavich, 37, demonstrated his invention before a group of skeptical reporters. At the beginning of the press conference, he put a cup made from the plastic inside a fish bowl that also contained two goldfish.
About 45 minutes later, the cup began to collapse and disintegrate. Another fishbowl had two goldfish swimming in milky water where Petcavich said another cup had biodegraded.
Petcavich said the residue left by the dissolved material can be eaten by microorganisms and become part of the food chain without any adverse biological effects.
In order to recycle the plastic, it has to be immersed in cool water. The polyoxyethylene in the material is water-soluble and can dissolve at room temperature. The plastic does not dissolve in hot water.
Petcavich said the plastic can be modified to handle cold drinks by coating the inside of a cup with a thick layer of wax. The wax will not prevent the plastic from biodegrading when the cup dissolves from the outside, he said.
Petcavich, who has a doctorate in polymer science from Pennsylvania State University and a degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Business, hailed his new invention as the answer for the pollution problem of the world’s beaches and other waterways, which are littered with plastic products of every kind.
“This material was designed so if the material gets in the waterway . . . it’s 100% dissolvable. . . . It dissolves faster in salt water,” he said.
According to his resume, Petcavich has been issued patents for seven other high-tech products. Among them, he said, are a flexible material that he invented that is used to make the B-1B bomber less noticeable to radar.
Morris Sievert, a retired corporate official with San Diego-based Deposition Technologies, called Petcavich “a very inventive fellow with a very fertile mind.” Sievert said that Petcavich was Deposition’s chief scientist before he left in October, 1988, to found Alpha-Scribe Express, an electronic medical records company.
While he was at Deposition, Petcavich directed the development of several high-tech products, Sievert said. These included a plastic window film that uses microscopic metal flakes to reflect heat and light.
“Petcavich was involved in inventing and marketing our more technical products,” Sievert said.
Sievert said he had not seen Petcavich’s invention, but he said that he did not doubt that it works.
“I don’t think there’s any question. He’s got the technical expertise to do this. . . . From an ecology point of view, it certainly sounds like something that’s very, very helpful. If it truly works, but I haven’t seen it,” Sievert said.
Although a biodegradable plastic could mean a financial bonanza for its inventor, Petcavich said manufacturers are not exactly beating a path to his door. He said business leaders that he met with to promote his invention reacted at first with disbelief.
“They didn’t believe it worked,” he said.
Petcavich said he hopes the press conference “will build up public awareness” of the new plastic. Meanwhile, he said he is negotiating with several manufacturers to market his invention.
In addition to drinking cups, he said, the new material can also be used to replace other disposable plastic products that do not biodegrade, like disposable diapers and food containers made from polystyrene foam. The water soluble plastic can help extend the life of the country’s landfills, he added.
Petcavich said the plastic can be recycled by boiling the cool water used to dissolve the material. Boiling water separates the polyoxyethylene and kills any bacterial particles. The resin left by the boiling water can then be recombined and remolded into reusable plastic, he said.
According to Petcavich, polyoxyethylene is not harmful to humans and is manufactured by a U.S. chemical company and two Japanese companies.
Other scientists have developed different types of biodegradable plastic. Scientists at the Michigan Biotechnology Institute, for example, have developed a plastic that has corn starch and metal catalysts added to promote biodegradability.
Researchers at the institute said that the plastic they are testing breaks down into a biochemical resin that is identical to fatty acids found in food. But, unlike the biodegradable plastic that Petcavich said he has invented, the plastic being tested at the Michigan research institute cannot be recycled.
