That trait, which makes a coffee lid or a fishing float so useful, also turns plastic into a long-term guest in places it was never invited. Unrecovered fragments collect across ecosystems, and they have become common in food chains. The worry is not just litter, it is persistence. A team of researchers now argues that water does not have to be the enemy of biodegradable materials. In their study, a chitin-derived biopolymer called chitosan gained strength when it got wet, reaching levels the authors place above many everyday plastics in the same conditions. The work was led by the Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia (IBEC) with the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and published in Nature Communications. A wet weakness, turned into a design feature Engineers have chased biobased alternatives to plastic for decades. The familiar snag is water. Many natural materials soften or weaken with moisture, which pushes manufacturers toward chemical tweaks or protective coatings. Those fixes often undercut the point of using biomaterials in the first place. Conceptual schematic of regional …