Technofossils: Humanity's eternal testament will be plastic bags, cheap clothes

Re:Technofossils: Humanity's eternal testament will be plast... by verisimi on Sunday February 23, 2025 @04:20PM (#43153323)

My impression is that plastic bags do not last that long. I have found old (perhaps 20 years old) plastic bags in sunless lofts, and others that had been buried (ie varied conditions) and both were very badly degraded. I cannot imagine that these things will last billions of years.

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Re:Technofossils: Humanity's eternal testament will be plast... by userbinator on Sunday February 23, 2025 @05:45PM (#43153953)

Some were manufactured to be "oxo-degradable" with specific additives. I suspect that's what you've found.

I have some plastic bags which are definitely at least 30 years old and they're still like new.

Pure polyethylene is very inert and can last many decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Plastic_(LDPE)_bowl,_by_G...

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Re:Technofossils: Humanity's eternal testament will be plast... by svilen_dobrev on Sunday February 23, 2025 @04:38PM (#43153476)

Mechanically, most plastics are not that durable. Chemically though - once into microscopic sizes.. close to eternal

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Re:Technofossils: Humanity's eternal testament will be plast... by nativeit on Sunday February 23, 2025 @08:52PM (#43155097)

The future portended here won’t be our leaving mountains of Solo cups and garbage bags, but rather untold generations worth of disrupted hormones, preventable deaths and disease, and ecological destruction on unprecedented scales. Plastic will degrade, but the large chained polymers it’s made of will persist in the environment effectively forever. At least, that’s how I understand this particular apocalyptic scenario.

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