How did people ever survive without plastic bottles? It must have been as difficult as living in the stone ages. Long after we are extinct and long after nuclear waste has decayed to a harmless level, plastic waste will still be there.
re: “Long after we are extinct and long after nuclear waste has decayed to a harmless level, plastic waste will still be there.”
I may be way off here on this, but it has been my personal experience that plastic does not last as long as many experts say.
Maybe it has to do with the thickness or some other quality, but it has been my observation that plastic, when exposed to the elements and long periods of sunlight, basically dissolves to dust.
I’m an avid large scale garden railroad enthusiast and the plastic railroad “ties” that is used with the track begin to decay and turn to dust within a few months of exposure outdoors.
The same is true with styrofoam cups I’ve seen in random trash that has blown into ditches or against fences. When I went to pick these up for clean-up and removal, often these break up in my hand or again, dissolve into “dust” before I can get them into the trash can.
Speaking of trash cans - the plastic ones - these too after a few years of exposure begin to become brittle and cracked in the open sunlight.
I think sunlight tears plastic down quickly. Like I said, I could be wrong on this, but it looks to me that plastic breaks down rather quickly. Maybe the “dust” it turns into is still plastic and merely changes appearance, but it does not seem to hang around as long as everyone says.
I’m not criticizing, just giving an observation.
Quadruple Nonsense!
1 Plastics decay in a matter of 3-4 hundred years.
2 The earth does not care that some of its constituent chemicals are in one form or another. If you care that there is plastic around you, clean it up. If at any point in time it becomes more expensive to deal with plastic than the benefit of having it, humans will stop using it. Basic economics.
3 We are building newer generations of plastics that decay far quicker, more suitable for uses that do not require long term storage.
4 How did we ever live before toilets? Should we revert to that also?
lol, and so who will see it? We'll be extinct.
And oil will still be bubbling up out of the earth, making tar pits, and killing baby bunnies.
Nothing on this planet lasts forever but I'll not forced to live in the stone age.
Islam requires that style of living for one purpose, control..
If someone said 50 years ago I will make millions by selling people bottles of plain tap water (yes Aquafina is municipal water filtered, distilled and re-mineraled) they would have called them nuts.