Plastic does deteriorat or disintegrat, but it only does so into smaller and smaller pieces of its self.

Things like a plastic bottle will break into smaller parts of the bottle and linger around for hundreds or thousands of years but the bottle "shape" will not be recognised in this sense.

Unfortunately plastics like organic materials don't breakdown and get absorbed the same way back into nature. Our streets would look a lot cleaner IMO if all our litter broke down quicker. Ie less plastic rappers flying around and chip bags.

Fun fact, when we freeze a bottle of water it too slowly deteriorates and disintegrates. That plastic is then transferred into the water contained in the bottle. Doing this multiple times can show the wear and tear overtime.

Even at microscopic levels things like toothbrushes brissle do show signs of wear and tear, as all products do.

My example of toothbrushes is more on how interwoven our plastic dependency is in our day to day lives. We may be ingesting plastics without even realistically knowing where from.

For example in our foods. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/22/health/plastics-food-wellness-scn/index.html#:~:text=Apples%20and%20carrots%20were%20the,also%20the%20least%20contaminated%20vegetable.

“People don’t think of plastics as shedding but they do,”

“In almost the same way we’re constantly shedding skin cells, plastics are constantly shedding little bits that break off, such as when you open that plastic container for your store-bought salad or a cheese that’s wrapped in plastic.”