Frequently asked questions.

Pabyss is a device made to rapidly and molecularly disintegrate all materials made by Timeplast regardless of their expiration date. Pabyss has two functions ``Discharge”; in which the materials are broken down to the carbon-to-carbon level, so we will know for a fact, and with actual physical evidence what we’re discarding in the waste water stream is a benign byproduct at naturally occurring molecular weight levels. The second function is “Upcycle”; in which Timeplast’s materials are depolymerized and cleaned in a full chemical recycling fashion, so that we end up with a pure and clean new Timeplast raw material. A true, circular, limitless recycling process which we believe will be the most useful at the municipality level, where true recycling (not the mechanical or down-cycle of conventional plastics being done currently, which nowadays is sold as circular economy) is needed.

Bottom line is that Timeplast is the only company on Earth bringing an end-to-end solution to the issue of plastic pollution, where we not only focus on creating our materials but also on developing engineering paths to optimally deal with our material’s footprint. Even when Timeplast is designed to be a benign material when discarded in Nature, a large enough amount of Timeplast, just like any other large enough amount of any material (like water, in hurricane season for example), when misplaced, it can cause a negative environmental impact; and for this we believe that Pabyss is the best and most ethical way that we should design our materials, with a full and comprehensive path to completely delete wasteful trail. Now all of us can delete our own plastic footprint for the first time ever.

Our materials behave like sugar alcohol after dissolution. Unlike fossil-based plastics, safety was the number one characteristic in the design of our materials. To that point, our raw materials have been independently approved for human consumption, and we have certified through an independent laboratory in an ASTM test, that Timeplast fully dissolves. Complete dissolution usually takes it down to a 80gr/mol molecular weight (sugar is around 400gr/mol). This doesn’t mean that it disappears but that it breaks down into natural occurring very low molecular weight molecules. In other words, it leaves behind no microplastics at all given the fact that after a full dissolution what is left is Ethanol and Hydroxyl groups, which are compounds made of carbon and an OH radical (as in oxygen and hydrogen). These groups are ever present in biochemistry, they’re constantly present in oceanic water, in alcohols, fats and fatty acids, sugars, amino acids, peptides, proteins and throughout the entire biochemical cycle, honestly speaking in large quantities dissolved in small water volumes they could change water’s pH but only if the water is contained, however the planet has 321 million cubic miles of water, so altering water’s planetary pH is impossible even if we dumped the Timeplast’s equivalent of 1000 times the amount of plastic our society is producing each year at once in the oceans. We actually made a field test and video on this https://youtu.be/HM9ID3wrLpk

These hydroxyl groups are not plastic, they’re foundation blocks for the biochemistry of our planet. Since alcohol-based organic chemistry drives no complex reactions in terms of polymeric molecular weights, our tech doesn’t stimulate the creation of new elements that may be problematic or toxically-diverse. There are some groups with anhydrous radicals which is why we talk about groups (in plural) yet all of them are safe.

Since our technology allows the molecular programming in any type of plastic, we do have other cheaper alternatives that can come from petroleum if the customer needs it, yet even in these cases, we’re addressing the main problem with conventional plastics; which is the fact that they never dissolve, not even when they have been eroded down to a nanometric particle, they continue to have an ultra high molecular weight, forever polluting the food chain. A fossil-based alcohol is chemically very similar to a bio-based one, and byproducts after dissolution won’t have the toxic biomagnification, meaning they won’t leave behind microplastics forever lingering in our environment, actually the other way around, they’ll perform properly for the intended pre-programmed time (ergo our company’s name), not any longer, and right afterwards the entire molecular structure will safely dissolve to naturally occurring molecular weight levels, which is the only path to have a clean environment at the macro, micro and nanometric level.

Microplastics are non-soluble, high molecular weight particles fragmented down to micro or nano-metric levels, yet even at that size they continue to have the same ultra high molecular weight precisely because they’re not water soluble. Before we discuss Timeplast, we would like to say that advertising biodegradation/composting as the way nature would supposedly return said materials to their lower molecular weight initial state is a hoax, a misleading term, a marketing tool and one of the worst mistakes in the history of sustainability.

It has been labeled as a scam for a very long time, including renowned scientists and experts on the topic, such as Jason Locklin, the director of the New Materials Institute at the University of Georgia who said: "Choosing products with packaging that claims to be biodegradable or compostable might mean that they degrade only under special conditions" and Jacqueline McGlade, chief scientist at the UN Environment Programme, told the Guardian that: “It’s well-intentioned but wrong. A lot of plastics labeled biodegradable, like shopping bags, will only break down in temperatures of 50C (122F) and that is not the ocean" (or your backyard) she said. Studies showed that landfills have been opened after several decades and the print can still be read on newspapers in almost all cases. Not even a leaf falling from a tree in an average backyard will biodegrade, it will only get compacted down to deeper layers of the earth to the point where it reaches the lithosphere; the proof of this is the fact that we have petroleum and carbon deposits deep down below the earth’s surface (90%+ of all carbon in our planet is solid). If all organic materials had biodegraded (the process of turning solid carbon into gas carbon through metabolic processes) our atmosphere would have more carbon in gas form than our lithosphere in solid, which isn’t the case. Study shows that if all plastics were to biodegrade this would generate an extinction-level environmental impact. Water solubility is the actual golden standard, not biodegradation.

Timeplast cannot become microplastic because water lowers its molecular weight, molecule by molecule, and after 60 hours, our materials’ molecular weight is at a naturally occurring levels, something that absolutely never happens with conventional plastic.

If we were to put Timeplast in a biodegradation study, we would perform just like sugar, in other words, it would biodegrade very fast, however we do not believe in biodegradation as a marketing tool, we believe in real science that can actually be extrapolated to reality.

• Programmable Water Resistance: Timeplast's ability to program the water resistance of its materials while maintaining water solubility is a key feature that enables its use in various applications, even those involving contact with liquids. The materials perform as intended for the predetermined time, after which they safely dissolve without leaving any polymeric residue.

• Safe Molecular Weight Reduction: The molecular weight of Timeplast drops from polymeric levels (~50,000g/mol) to naturally occurring levels (~500g/mol) upon contact with water, ensuring that no toxic or harmful substances are released. In contrast, conventional plastics maintain their ultra-high molecular weight even when eroded into nanometric sizes due to their lack of water solubility.

• Recyclability and Reusability: Timeplast materials can be both recycled and reused, making them environmentally friendly and versatile. Even when exposed to moisture, their shelf life remains unaffected, allowing for extended use in various conditions.

• Controlled Dissolution: Timeplast provides precise control over the time it takes for materials to start dissolving in water, ranging from 60 seconds to an indefinite duration. This flexibility makes it suitable for a wide range of applications.

Our materials need to be in constant contact with a significant mass of free flowing water in order to dissolve. Moisture/humidity will not affect our shelf life, even if our materials get wet (so long there is a drying period), with applications such as reusable items, packaging materials left in the rain, shampoo bottles in a bathroom, all will be fine for extended periods of time. Once a product reaches its programmed lifespan and they come in contact with a body of water such as a river, lake or an ocean for 60 consecutive hours, only then will they fully dissolve.

Timeplast's main technological point is the programmability of its portfolio. Making a plastic non-soluble is easy, which is why all plastics are non-soluble. Making them water resistant for a limited period of time and then fully soluble like sugar, is precisely the complex problem Timeplast has solved. It also allows us to have an incredibly large number of applications, so much so that if we numbered those mentioned applications in the limited space we have in these ads, we would most certainly leave many applications without mention, thus making people believe we wouldn’t work in those as well.

Our materials behave like crystallized sugar alcohol. Unlike conventional plastics, safety was the number one characteristic in the design of our materials. To that point, our raw materials have been independently approved for human consumption, and we have certified through an independent laboratory in an ASTM test, that Timeplast fully dissolves in water (which isn’t our stomachs but our bodies in general are mostly water). Complete dissolution usually takes Timeplast down to a 500gr/mol molecular weight (sugar is around 400gr/mol). This doesn’t mean that it disappears but that it breaks down into natural occurring very low molecular weight molecules. In other words, it leaves behind no microplastics at all given the fact that after a full dissolution what is left is Ethanol and Hydroxyl groups, which are compounds made of carbon and an OH radical (as in oxygen and hydrogen). These groups are ever present in biochemistry, they’re constantly present in oceanic water, in alcohols, fats and fatty acids, sugars, amino acids, peptides, proteins and throughout the entire biochemical cycle, honestly speaking in large quantities dissolved in small water volumes they could change our bodies’ pH, but since Timeplast isn’t made for human consumption, any ingestion would be accidental, thus minimal. At large quantities not only Timeplast but even pure water could be dangerous. Bottom line is that these above-mentioned hydroxyl groups are not plastic, they’re foundation blocks for the biochemistry of our planet. Our tech doesn’t stimulate the creation of new elements that may be problematic or toxically-diverse. There are some groups with anhydrous radicals which is why we talk about groups (in plural) yet all of them are safe. I’d like to emphasize that Timeplast isn’t meant to be ingested, yet if it happens, it won’t be a biomagnification factor like conventional plastic.

This would be nearly impossible. We cannot, not use plastic given that our society is based on plastic. If we were to remove plastic from the equation many people would die, starting from those in hospitals and following with the many lives depending on this very inexpensive, massively versatile and incredibly high quality of the materials science. Plastic is a marvel of engineering that can not and will not be replaced without a material capable of performing comparably in its desired use but with a better post consumer outcome.

Studies have shown that if we were to replace only 29% of our plastics with aluminum (the metal with the lowest carbon footprint) we would spend 100 times more energy as a civilization , in order to replace less than 30%. Since most energy sources come from fossil fuel, we would be essentially creating an extinction level event in terms of climate change, and even then we still wouldn’t be able to make a dent in the plastic production. Glass is even worse given that it requires between 4-25X times more energy to produce glass than aluminum. Paper presents the same issue, on top of not being thermoplastic, just like cloth and other materials, which means we would not be able to have the society we have today. If you enter a hospital for example, most of the technological points are based on thermoplastic materials, which are able to take any form we need and to maintain said form, down to very small pieces. Without plastic our society would suffer and possibly collapse. Substitutions to conventional plastic will never work if taken lightly and more so, statements about plastic substitution need to be taken very seriously.

Our materials break down to a molecular weight lower than dissolved sugar. ASTM certified for Hydroxyl groups as the single byproduct. Our plastic even disarrayed color pigment particles, which are some of the smallest particles in organic chemistry, so small in fact that you can attach one radical to each water molecule. In fact you can taint an entire Olympic pool with a table spoon of Potassium Permanganate. We used the exact same color pigment in our test and our polymer chain lowered its molecular weight to a point in which completely released all KMnO4 into the water it was dissolving in. Hydroxyl groups are natural occurring, in other words Timeplast leaves behind no microplastics at all given the fact that Hydroxyl groups are compounds ever present in oceanic water, in alcohols, fats and fatty acids, sugars, amino acids, peptides, proteins and throughout the entire biochemical cycle. These groups are not plastic, they’re foundation blocks for biochemistry and not a biomagnification factor. Try to detach a color pigment from a fossil-based conventional polyolefin, it’s technically impossible without denaturalization of the pigment.