Plastics (sub-topic of Recycling)

[KevinC]

Over the past few decades we have all seen articles about plastics in our environment - often accompanied with photos of fish, ducks, and other wildlife caught in beer can 6-pack plastic trash.  Clearly this is bad.

More recently there has been publications that plastics are now found in every environment monitored on the planet - from ocean bottoms to mountain ranges.

Recently microplastics have been in the news.  For example:  https://www.thoughtco.com/what-are-microplastics-1204133

Microplastics are of a particular concern to me, for by definition, they have relatively huge surface areas.  My concern is simply:  something, likely bacteria in nature, is going to evolve to eat plastics - and will do so voraciously.  If it becomes airborne (and it likely would via ocean surf), imagine the impact!  All plastic packaging dissolves - from milk to blood bags.  Cars fall mostly apart.

We need to greatly reduce the amount of plastic in our environment, the same way we have (finally) started to reduce antibiotics.  Going back to glass for fluid containers would be a good start...