That said, bacteria can evolve pretty fast because of high population sizes and low generation times. In the 50's they found a bacteria that had evolved to digest the synthetic material nylon. I wonder why bacteria haven't evolved to digest plastic yet. Possibly there is some scientific reason that it's inefficient to digest. Maybe we could speed evolution up by dissolving plastic in a liquid first so it's more accessible to them.
And it went on for about 60 Million years which seems an unfathomable timespan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carboniferous#Rocks_and_coal
So it wasn't mountains of wood that lay on the ground during the Carboniferous period, it was like, the best mulching job ever. The trees pwned all other species at that time. Can you imagine being a weed trying to grow up through all that bark? You'd have one hell of an up-hill battle!
Long molecule chains in plastics seem like they would be easy. I guess it takes the right blender to chop it up!
I also imagine a small caterpillar-sized blender involved. Now I need a smoothie.
Lignin (wood) and cellulose are pretty tough to break down, but there are things that eat them.
Plastic fundamentally (chemically) is made of the same stuff as wood, just in a different arrangement of atoms, and releases energy when decomposed. So it seems quite reasonable that there would be things that can eat it.
I think the plastic pollution we are seeing right now is a temporary thing - soon enough there will a large enough population of plastic eaters that it will no longer be a problem.
(We should avoid plastics that have chlorine in them though, except where needed. PVC is the most common example of a plastic like this.)