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Arguably the plastics break down until they become basic short polymers that exist in everything though no? At some point they progress from micro-plastics to n
by Aromasin 2y ago
Arguably the plastics break down until they become basic short polymers that exist in everything though no? At some point they progress from micro-plastics to non-harmful substances. So having a break point where we stop producing plastics would mean that we stop adding then to the environment whilst allowing the eventual half-life of the material to take its course (granted that's probably 10s of thousands of years from now, but with clean up operations that could be accelerated).
- clark_dent 2y agoWell, no. Some common plastics like polycarbonate aren't biodegradable, and will basically never break down without application of significant heat/water/enzymatic activity/etc. For some of these, the half-life could be a great deal more even than 10s of millenia: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b06635#:~:text=Using%20a%20mean%20SSDR%20for,to%201200%20years%20(pipes) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acssuschemeng.9b06635#:~:te....