Nobody likes plastic because it lasts "thousands of years". People care about storing food products well. If we can do that without lasting thousands of years that seems like a pretty good win.
Good at storing food products and lasting thousands of years are very closely related.
The problem with plastic also isn't that it can last thousands of years, glass also has that property, to an even greater degree.
The problem with plastics isn't that it won't degrade on its own. It is that you can't really do anything with it after it has been disposed, recycling of glass is simple, recycling of plastics is very difficult as it degrades the material properties.
The problem with plastic is not that nothing can be done with it after disposal, the problem with plastic is that it harms the environment during use.
There is no problem with the fact that a plastic bag does not deteriorate for thousands of years after use: you just throw it in the trash, and it lies in a pile of garbage for thousands of years, absolutely harmless and with a near-zero impact on the environment (because the areas of garbage dumps are tiny both relative to the environment and relative to other human impacts on the environment)
Propaganda about the harm of plastic bags is designed for complete idiots, whose idiocy borders on a clinical diagnosis.
The real problem is with other products of plastic, which break down while in use, polluting the water and air with microparticles.
Car tires, synthetic fabrics, paints and paint coatings and various exterior finishes, sidings and so on. All of this, even with the slightest wear, whether from mechanics or ultraviolet radiation, pollutes the environment throughout the entire use.
Against this problem, plastic bags are completely harmless even if we start using them ten times more and throwing them away ten times more often. And this problem cannot be solved by changing the method of disposal or recycling. Only by stopping the use.
The fight against plastic bags and all this stuff about recycling plastic is literally a joke how drunk man searching for something under the streetlight that he lost somewhere else in the park. Only he searches for it at someone else's expense, actively spending the allocated funds on alcohol and large-scale media projects on the need and importance of the search under the streetlight
Yes. It still produces microplastics. It might be compostable or biodegradable in some environments, but we're a far distance away from from an environmentally safe plastic.