Engineering360: "Plastic World"

An all-too-common example of fear of chemistry and corporations, and basic fear of science, as scientific need for repeatable and quantitative evidence challenges our needs to believe IN impossible things for functional sanity. Mystery OK, magic No. Read that again until it's clear: people need to believe the impossible, and thus resent/reject logic and evidence (climate change is best example), especially when it means control of behavior and consumption patterns.

Plastics are harmless as made but may degrade into chemically-active substances, which is one reason I don't like degradability (devaluing recycle streams is another). No matter, the public thinks they are bad, and this article and the study it quotes just feed that image, preaching to the believers who need to believe, not just to the converted.

The huge quantities are incomprehensible to most of us, thus all the more effective. The permanence of plastics bothers many, but Rathje and others who studied landfills proved a long time ago that degradable doesn't mean degraded, any more than recyclable (which most all plastics are) means actually recycled. Even recycling has its down side, as it may cost more energy to recycle certain products (like almost all glass) than to make new products. Bottom line: Use Less Stuff, Fix Old Stuff, Throw Almost Nothing Away (ULS-FOS-TANA).