Eons ago, trees didn't degrade, because bacteria hadn't evolved to eat it. This is SO cool.
If you could push a magic button and create a bacteria to eat plastic at similar rates, making plastic biodegradable in the same way trees are, would you do it?
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I guess ... yes. Clearly in the long run it would be much better for the environment (depending on what sort of waste product that bacteria creates, of course), but in the short term it would make a whole lot of problems for humans.
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There might be some medical implants for example that are partly made of plastic with the expectation that it won't rot if left inside the patient.
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Said no, we still rely on a lot of plastics for several important things, food storage, medical use, etc. They'd probably eat plastic indiscriminately and we'd be screwed.
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Everyone saying yes to this has not cosidered the ramifications to most human constructed objects. You're putting a lifespan on anything made using plastics not just the stuff in the landfills.
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“At similar rates” is the important thing here. If we can control for unintended consequences like that then sure, let’s do it. But if it was a natural process that we engineered bacteria to do it then I would be more wary as we’d probably screw it up and get eaten.
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