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I think plastics main selling point is not its longevity, but the possibility to easily form objects of many shapes.

What makes you believe "rot like paper" is more appropriate than "rot like wood"?



Wood is thicker, denser, and has more structure than paper. My guess is that paper is a closer analogy in this case.


This 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.


Wood 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)


It was several million years


Paper 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.




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