Plastic pollution doesn’t seem to be getting better. But what if we could engineer plastics to get rid of themselves? A team of scientists in China recently demonstrated this somewhat comically idealistic solution, reporting their findings in a recent paper published in ACS Applied Polymer Materials . This new “living” plastic, as the team describes it, contains plastic-degrading microbes that activate and self-destruct on command. Although this isn’t the first time scientists have tested similar materials, the new experiment looks promising. A proof-of-concept test with a wearable plastic electrode confirmed that, as intended, the plastic degraded completely within two weeks. When built on the living plastic, a prototype wearable electrode readily degrades (bottom row), while one built on a commercially available plastic persists (top row).…