How Fast Is Plastic Biodegradation?

Plastic water bottles take roughly 450 years to break down — and even then, many plastics never truly biodegrade. They simply fragment into ever-smaller microplastics that persist essentially forever, drifting through soil, oceans and bodies.

Every piece of plastic ever manufactured still exists somewhere on Earth.

• Effectively stationary on any human timescale
• Even slower than continents drift apart