I just wondered how we made these sorts of things when everything on Earth works together and naturally decomposes.
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First: You have to understand that not everything **IS** biodegradable. Metal and stone are not. OR they are, but the process can take millions of years.
Second, things are only biodegradable if something else exists that can degrade it. After trees first evolved, they did not rot because no fungi had evolved to eat wood. So they just piled up. That is where coal comes from.
Even though things like oil and coal came from living things, the heat and pressure of being trapped underground for millions of years have converted the chemicals in them into other chemicals, that nothing has yet evolved to digest. Then, we modify that oil and coal even further to make stuff out of
Some bacteria are starting to evolve to digest plastic, but… They can’t keep up. We are taking oil that took millions of years to develop and using it up in just over a hundred years (maybe a couple hundred, if we don’t kill ourselves first). Almost no natural process could keep up with that, even if it already existed.
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