And, you know, for better or worse, we really rely on plastic for, well, pretty much everything. If we can no longer trust it to do things like safely transport medicine, we’re gonna be in real trouble.
They are also heavier, less robust, more rigid, harder to seal tightly (without plastic), and completely impractical for large-ish items like some food items. Plastic-wrapped bananas are craziness, but a huge lot of our amazing level of food safety depends on plastics, so we can expect getting sick from food a lot more in a post-plastic world, like we used to before the advent of almost-free plastic wrappers.
I don't remember getting sick from food because it was wrapped in paper. And we still don't really know what all the hormone-like substances and microplastics leaching into our food do as a whole.
First of all, anything that is reasonably dry usually stays reasonably safe against bacteria. Unless the bacteria learns to combine oxygen with the hydrogen from the hydrocarbons to form their source of humidity, I think these should be relatively stable, still.
And we still have the option to store things in metal containers, like cans if we need that extra durability.
But under humid conditions, if bacteria become able to consume plastic the way they can consume organic matter, I would be even more concerned about regular grocery wrapping. Not only could the wrapping break, one could also get half-digested toxic materials into the food itself.
