We hypothesized that the environmental lifetime of an item could be decreased not only by changing its material but also by changing its form (i.e., increasing the item's surface area). We validated this design strategy for a prototyped, foamed CDA straw (i.e., a straw with closed-cell, mesoscale porosity, and thus greater surface area). The foamed CDA straw had a comparable thickness to the solid CDA straw (Table ). After 16 weeks, the foamed straw had visible signs of mass loss (e.g., holes) (Figure ), unlike the others (Figure ). Compared to the solid CDA straw, foaming increased the relative mass loss by 29% at 16 weeks and the 𝑘 𝑑 by 190% to 22463 µm/yr (Figures 5B). Unlike the solid CDA straw, the foamed CDA straw did not contain triacetin plasticizer and thus did not display a significant gain in mass loss within the first few weeks of incubation in the flow-through seawater mesocosm. The mean projected environmental lifetime for a CDA-based straw decreased nearly three-fold, from ~15 months for a solid straw to ~6 months for the foamed straw. Notably, the lifetime of the foamed bioplastic CDA straw is one and three months shorter than that of the uncoated and coated paper straws, respectively. Similar microbial community composition between the two CDA straws (Figures ) reinforced that the change in the form of the foamed straw, rather than a change in material type, drove the increase in degradation rate. Foaming thus offers a promising strategy to reduce the persistence of biodegradable plastic items in the environment, exemplifying the green engineering principle of design for durability rather than immortality.