collapse

Life already breaks down hydrocarbons with the help of enzymes for foods (e.g., starch and celluose are polymers). It won't take much to evolve that mechanism to break open and digest the long chain plastic polymers, and in fact there are already bacteria and yeast that will eat some plastics. Given enough time, it will just be another food source.

I predict that in future generations we'll be in a similar race as we are today with antibiotics, only with plastics. Bacteria, yeast & fungus will infect and compromise strategic plastics like sterile medical supplies and humans will have to develop new plastics to stave off a future where material science can't rely on plastics.

BTW, I'm no petroleum shill or trying to minimize the impact plastic is likely already having in our ecosphere, but I want to put "alarming" into perspective. nanoplastics are going to do some serious damage and we should be looking for rapidly decomposing plastics made with non-petroleum source stock, but life will survive plastic (including Human life). I'm willing to bet that the ocean already has little pockets of microscopic life feeding on nanoplastic as a food source.