Quote:
Originally Posted by MorTech
Almost all plastics are just ethylene which is a naturally occurring plant hormone. They bio-degrade quite rapidly to CO2 and water especially in the sunlight and in water. Dumping plastic in the middle of the ocean is ideal. Y'all need to stop watching the idiot box.
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Untrue. Ethylene is ONE component, a major one, that goes into the creation of plastics. Ethylene without being manipulated and mixed with other things is just a gas, it isn't a solid. It needs catalysts to turn it into plastic, and that creates a new thing.
It's like saying humans are just carbon. We're not "just" carbon. If you put a bunch of carbon into a bowl and stir it, you won't get a human.
If you spray a bunch of ethylene gas into a paper bag, you won't get plastic.
And conversely, when plastic does degrade, it doesn't turn into just ethylene. It can take a minimum of 10 years to biodegrade, and the maximum hasn't been discovered yet since there are still bits of undegraded plastic in landfills that have been there since the items those bits of plastic came from were invented. The current "guess" is up to 1000 years.