Do you think the earth is going to reclaim itself from mankind's ravaging of it?

Ya but..in that case of blowing it up..all hope is loss. Thats's all. Unless you mean blow up mankind's polluting apparatus and even sacrifice ourselves for others you mean. Over!

Well, obviously we won't destroy the planet, nor will we destroy all life on it, but I'm afraid you're right about greed and selfishness.

Our species is its own worst enemy.

Why are all nations not trying to cleanse to oceans of our own plastic crap....we will all be eating it to in every increasing amounts once it's established in the sea life food chain....

I don't think we will. Even if we do I doubt it would harm us.

Anyway, Which "Plastic", of what type, in what form?

The plastics that end up eaten in the sea are tiny breakdown fragments from ones that can decompose, or are the "micro-beads" used in toiletries. These are swallowed by planktonic creatures such as diatoms, animals tiny enough for the particles to obstruct their own digestive systems. Kill them off and that removes a vast source of food for larger fish.

We have to be careful though is debating anything environmental, to think it through. Sticking here though to "plastics"....

First, ignore the most rabid campaigners - the louder and more clichéd they are, the less I believe they have any scientific or engineering knowledge. I should add I have no connection with the plastics manufacturers or the refuse- and scrap -trades, but a mixture of varied employment and general scientific interest has given me a fairly broad wealth of general technical knowledge and the scientific curiosity to ask "how, why and what if?".

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The term "Plastic" covers a vast range of types, forms and uses; and we all rely on plastics, probably far more than most people realise. For a start, we could not discuss plastics like this without plastics and related materials - I doubt we'd even have the electricity.

It is NOT the materials that are the villain, but two human responses to them:

1) Profligacy: e.g., "throw-away fashions" (a problem now being highlighted), needless replacement of perfectly good or serviceable / repairable equipment (who needs a new 'phone every year?); the vast array of cheap gee-gaws offered to children.


2) Bad or improper disposal of plastic waste. We users cannot help the micro-beads becoming diatoms' dinner, but the toiletry manufacturers can, by not adding them in the first place.  There are though, other difficulties arising both from improper disposal and with the best will in the world.

Some plastics, including polyethylene and polypropylene (the latter a common rope material) break down in nature to tiny fragments that could be eaten involuntarily by animals, leading to obstruction rather than poisoning. Polythene bags afloat on the oceans are fatal to turtles who mistake them for edible jellyfish.

Some plastic forms, such as can-bundling rings and discarded/lost fishing-gear, can be dangerous to wildlife by ensnaring.
 (This is not the same as the drowning of sea-birds and marine-mammals caught in nets and long-lines - that has nothing to do with material, but is a matter of fishing methods.)

Certain types - the thermosetting, synthetic-resin, and synthetic-resin-bonded materials - and NOT readily recoverable at all; and I have no idea what is or can be done with them as scrap, beyond land-fill. These include the glass-fibre circuit-boards in electronic equipment (after the metals have been salvaged from them), and the carbon- and glass- fibre composites staple to wind-turbine, vehicle and marine manufacturing. 

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So yes, whilst obviously everyone world-wide must avoid polluting the seas with directly or indirectly harmful materials, we must also avoid merely scapegoating an entire class of materials because a very few of its most common types and forms are used and disposed of badly or wrongly. We must also be brighter than the "extinction rebellion" types and truanting schoolchildren, whether sincere or not; by learning and thinking far more deeply than just the obviously visible, the end-use, the mythical "free lunch".


I'll exemplify that last point by something I learnt only a few weeks ago. As you know, there is a lot of waffle about ending the practice of wrapping perishable foods for the shops. In fact that wrapping both protects from contamination, and more importantly perhaps, slows these biological products' natural breakdown. Without it, a vast amount more food would be wasted simply by over-ripening and decomposing faster than it can be sold. It made me understand for instance what I had noticed, that the bagged bananas almost always look fresher than the loose ones - though this might also reflect customers preferring the bagged and leaving the loose.

Finally, if you still hate "plastics": what will happen when, eventually, the world's petroleum resources have all run dry? As I say, think beyond obviously visible and end-use. At least we reading this now won't be around to wonder why nobody had really started to ask now. Easy to avoid when personal Eternity will comfortably predate the Earthly.....

I must say ,what a great answer..all you say is true ,but humans need to do so much more to protect all sea life big ,small ,tiny and microscopic before its all to late....:(

Thank you - and yes, I agree with that need.