Hm. "Plastics cannot be degraded" is the usual sermon; [1], [2], for example. Or course its trivially easy to find degraded plastics in the wild; but that's never seemed to be a concern when there's dogma to advance.
> Plastic isn't a material that decomposes, but must be recycled. Instead, plastic tends to break down into smaller particles until they are too small to be seen. This means that every molecule of plastic produced since 1907 is still present in the environment.
[1] https://pelacase.com/blogs/news/does-plastic-degrade
[2] https://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-m...
> Plastic isn't a material that decomposes, but must be recycled. Instead, plastic tends to break down into smaller particles until they are too small to be seen. This means that every molecule of plastic produced since 1907 is still present in the environment.