My recycling box from the council is made of plastic. So is the spare one I found knocking around the garden one day. In 1978 we had a dustbin made of tin. In 2008 I have two wheeliebins made of plastic.
The “benefits” of plastic include “extreme durability”. Is extreme durability a benefit in product packaging? In a milk bottle? In a landfill? In the ocean?
Is extreme durability a benefit in fashionable products? Like an iPod or mobile phone, whose battery technology can have a life of as little as 3 years, and whose shelf life can be less than one year, but whose case will not decompose for many many years more?
As marine researcher Charles Moore says, quoted in this article,
The ocean is downhill from everywhere. It’s like a toilet that never flushes. You can’t take these particles out of the ocean. You can just stop putting them in.