There's some poorly run landfills, but how about we campaign to somewhat improve landfills instead of trying to reform all of modern society?
How many years will it take until the plastic is no longer able to get into the food chain?
Also, you aren't thinking in deep time. Plastic waste needs to be managed indefinitely if it isn't going to be incinerated, because plastic becomes more dangerous, not less, as it becomes finer particles. Which also penetrate containment more readily.
We can regulate our own landfills and we can regulate which countries we export to. This is a far more realistic prospect than just banning most plastic products outright, as you suggest.
> Plastic waste needs to be managed indefinitely if it isn't going to be incinerated, because plastic becomes more dangerous, not less, as it becomes finer particles.
Yes, waste needs to be managed indefinitely, and we will always have to manage waste. We can do that.
And a little more concerning
>What matters most is whether these physical and chemical impacts ultimately affect an organism’s growth, reproduction or susceptibility to illness. In a surprising study published in March, not only did fish exposed to microplastics reproduce less but their offspring, who weren’t directly exposed to plastic particles, also had fewer young, suggesting the effects can linger into subsequent generations.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/from-fish-to-huma...
It took decades to understand asbestos was bad as it is and even then it took direct exposure (generally with you working with the stuff). Plastic is building up in the environment daily, and the levels have only really start to increase.
Plastic is also effectively forever, there is no practical plastic abatement like there is with asbestos. One great way of dealing with asbestos removal is keeping it damp, microplastics though are just going to spread with water. Microplastics are in the air and water, it's effectively falling like snow from the sky which is documented in the NatGeo article I linked.
Concentrations of microplastics is only going to go up as more and more of the plastic we've created starts to break down into smaller and smaller pieces. When you get small enough, like nano-scale, particles can get extremely dangerous as they can cross the cell membrane.
Plastic pollution is likely going to be far worse than asbestos and for incredibly more species.
Someone else's problem.
In all seriousness, by then either we have solved waste disposal through automation, or we will be living in landfills.