3 ms·
Wood is thicker, denser, and has more structure than paper. My guess is that paper is a closer analogy in this case.
by pmichaud 4y ago
Wood is thicker, denser, and has more structure than paper. My guess is that paper is a closer analogy in this case.
- wyago 4y agoThis is probably accurate for films and fabrics, but I wouldn't be surprised if thick solids would be at least as slow to rot as wood. I don't know what proportion of plastic mass is in each form though.
- marcosdumay 4y agoPaper is porous. Metal sheets are closer to it. Any biological digestion of plastic will be either a very slow process focused on microplastics or have a large mechanical component.
- culi 4y agoWood is a nice analogy because when it was first evolved there was nothing on earth that could break down the lignin. As a result, we had a couple thousand years where wood just piled up like a global waste crisis. Eventually fungi got really good at dealing with it We're again seeing a waste crisis due to a novel material and once again fungi might end up saving us (though we don't have a thousand years to wait this time)
- mrcartmeneses 4y agoIt was several million years