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

Things bacteria and fungi don’t know how to break down happen sometimes even without our help. The Carboniferous period, when most of the world’s coal formed, was the time after plants started making lignin and before decomposers learned to break it down (the lignin piled up, got buried, and eventually got compressed into coal).