Single use wooden items don’t cause flooding and damage wildlife.
These are not the same. They don’t have the same problems.
AFAIK its paper, sure but laminated with aluminum and plastic so good luck separating the layers into recyclable stuff.
Not that recycling is a panacea in the first place… more like a gimmick to make us feel good about wasting so much instead of questioning the methods of the industries producing all the waste in the first place.
Burying is not the same as being thrown in the ocean, or ripped into little pieces and thrown on the ground.
Burying would likely keep plastic in the immediate vicinity, and we have another tool to add. Bacteria.
There are bacteria which eat plastic. If we could find some anaerobic ones, burying might work quite well.
Of course I guess that leaves the carbon free again, unless...
We find or engineer bacteria which produce a great precursor, to make plastic!
It would be a strange outcome, if plastic became fully renewable.
Since all life forms on earth rely heavily on water as solvent (being present ideally all the time), those 'invasive' bacteria won't have that much of an effect on humanity's habits IMHO, since regularly removing the water easily keeps their impact low.
Fungi might play an important role in decomposition of plastics as well, since they have advantages over bacteria that may be relevant for decomposition of plastics in the same way in which they are for decomposing wood. (Which is difficult for bacteria)
The point is that from a human perspective, and from the perspective of most multicellular organisms, plastics discarded into the environment are a really bad thing for our health.
But needlessly bombarding it with artificial chemicals surely has some kind of threshold over which adaptation mostly fails, equilibria get destroyed and the system becomes indeed instable.
> ... as long as it isn't disrupting ecosystems.
Problem is, who can reliably tell when it'll be too much?
IMO not worth risking "everything" for some added convenience of "ingenious" food packaging.