How did we make plastic that isn’t biodegradable and is so bad for the planet, out of materials only found on Earth?

Question

I just wondered how we made these sorts of things when everything on Earth works together and naturally decomposes.

In: 6571

Answer 1

Its comes from the earth but has been modified to give it different properties. So liquid oil is converted into a hard plastic that nothing has seen before. Good analogy is turning your wood house into a steel shed. Termites have never seen steel before and struggle to break it down over time.

Bio degradable plastics focus on making it more useful to life around it. So instead of going from wood to steel, your going from balsa wood to purple heart. It may be different wood buts its still wood and the terminates know how to make use of it even if it takes longer