There is no paradox: Plastics have really only been around for less than a century. Modern plastics are all synthetic, and sufficiently distinct to all naturall

There is no paradox: Plastics have really only been around for less than a century. Modern plastics are all synthetic, and sufficiently distinct to all naturally occurring biopolymers. So bacteria only had ~100 years to evolve this capability. Compare this to the ~60 million years it took to evolve wood-digesting enzymes efficiently. The situation isn’t entirely comparable, since these enzymes wouldn’t have to evolve “from scratch”. Hence why researchers may have found rudimentary capabilities in the wild. But evolving this from the basics to an efficient food source naturally would take a very long time indeed.