Combine the hard stuff in shrimp shells with a spider silk protein and you get shrilk, a tough, biodegradable replacement for world-choking plastics
At least the archaeologists will be pleased. If you were wrapped in disposable nappies any time after their widespread adoption in the 1960s, traces of your faeces will probably remain preserved deep in some landfill for a good few hundred years at least, awaiting analysis by scientists looking for insights into a peculiarly profligate era of human history.
That's because those nappies, like a good deal of our worldly goods today, contain an unhealthy dose of non-biodegradable plastics: sodium polyacrylate, the polymer that traps urine in the nappy's core; polyethylene plastic for the waterproof outer shell; and polymer-based adhesives to keep all the different bits together. Not to mention the polyethylene package they are sold in. Like them or loathe ...
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429900.700-wonder-stuff-shrimp-plus-spider-kills-plastic.html
