I’m not talking about plastic with specific issues (i.e. plastics bags look like jellyfish to sea turtles so sea turtles eat them and die).
But the sand on the beach is still going to be sand on the beach in 10,000 years, so what specific issues are going to happen from X amount of sand grains being plastic?
Edit: Based on the first few replies: I’m talking about plastics that are said to still be there, unchanged, millions of years later. Like they’d show up on the geological record. “Forever plastics”
IF they don’t decay what’s the issue? Or is them not decaying and “forever plastics” a misconception?
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Plastic *does* break down, just not in the same way you’d expect. Usually when we say “break down” we mean something like decomposition. So another way to frame your question is “why is plastic that doesn’t decompose an issue, plenty of rocks don’t decompose either”
The key difference is that rocks usually stay as big rocks. If all plastic bottles stayed *as plastic bottles* forever, the problem would actually be smaller than it is now.
The problem is that plastic *does* break down. It just becomes smaller. And smaller. And smaller. Think like rocks becoming pebbles becoming sand. They’re still “rock”, but “smaller”.
Except that these plastics can break down so small they can get into your bloodstream, or your brain. We don’t know the consequences of this.
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