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It's not. Plastics do decompose slowly, but they certainly do decompose -- especially under sunlight. If they didn't decompose we would have a lot more plastic
by throwaway09223 4y ago
It's not.
Plastics do decompose slowly, but they certainly do decompose -- especially under sunlight. If they didn't decompose we would have a lot more plastic in the environment than we do now.
Here's a recent study on the rate of decomposition in the ocean: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304389419310192 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030438941...
- smileybarry 4y agoI didn't mean they stuck around forever, but that they stuck around for much longer and much more "painfully" than we anticipated. The entire microplastics phase was probably not really anticipated when they introduced "biodegradable" plastic bags, which eventually just broke down to tiny plastic that gets on everything around it.
- blueflow 4y agoSo its not stable, it just has a relatively long lifetime.