3 ms·

I'm not a chemist. Why doesn't plastic get broken down? Will there be a future where my doctor will prescribe me an enzyme or something that will breakdown the

• Tyr42 3y ago
  Wood's cellulose was not broken down for millennia, and then live evolved ways to eat it (like mushrooms). But before then, there were piles and piles of dead trees. I suspect plastics will be similar. Nothing has evolved to eat them, so nothing does.
  • AlexandrB 3y ago
    It's happening[1], albeit slowly. Plastic is such an energy-dense substance that it seems inevitable something will eat it eventually. Might not be pretty though - imagine the kind of bacterial blooms that could happen in plastic-polluted waterways. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/14/bugs-across-globe-are-evolving-to-eat-plastic-study-finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/14/bugs-acr...
• stevenwoo 3y ago
  Making plastic requires a specific step of heating to very high, specific temperatures and pressures and separating components of petrochemicals or similar biomass that cannot be easily reversed by aging or biological processes. A metaphor for this might be thinking about cracking an egg and scrambling it in a frying pan, then attempting to reverse this and put the egg back together only using mechanical steps and cooling - it's impossible by any practical means.