Anthony Andrady: Plastics have been around for perhaps, less than 100 years. So in the short time span, there hasn’t been a group of microorganisms who have evolved who are capable of biodegrading plastics.

You are listeningAnthony Andrady, he is a plastics researcher at RTI International, which offers research and technical expertise to governments and businesses.

Anthony Andrady: This is my concern, in a sense, you are placing all these plastics in the ocean, and eventually they will reach the deep ocean environment.

Dr. Andrady’s special interest is the increasing quantity of plastic now known to be in the oceans. He said plastic lasts a long time there, because cold sea water slows down the chemical reactions that cause a plastic bottle lying on a beach for example, to break down.

Anthony Andrady: If you define biodegradation as the complete conversion of plastics into carbon dioxide and water, all the plastics that we ever put into the ocean – which is over the last 50 to 60 years – would still be there in the ocean. And we keep adding more and more to it. And we do not know what the ecological consequences of this are. They might be very serious.