I am always amazed about how surprised people are that materials that are specifically engineered to decompose as slowly as possible are in fact doing just that.
There's one for you. People here actively protest against building a tertiary system for tax reasons and because they think they don't need it (there's actually a lot of people who even think that it's less environmentally friendly to have it dealt with on land). It's been an on going debate for over 30 years.
These people also see themselves as "green".
However, a lot of this plastic _starts_ as micro-plastic particles: microbeads from cosmetics and polyester fibres from clothes (water from washing machines is full of this) - these are in household waste water and often end up in the ocean.
When you wash clothing that contains artificial fibres you dump a load into the water system, and depending where you live some will end up in the sea. All those acrylic fleeces and blankets shed thousands of particles each wash.
Some cosmetics contain plastic microbeads, and when you use those and wash them off you dump the microbeads into the water system.
material is engineered to last, not decompose. in the sea Or land.
yet people use it every day. and when those news show up they show shock at a perfectly predictable outcome. then proceed to continue to use said product.
plastic is designed to not decompose. people use plastic. people get shocked that it didn't decompose. people forget about shock one second later and pop another nespresso capsule in the nasty coffee machine.