As you've already noticed, a lot of people's lives depend on various plastics used in medical systems.

I had a reason for posting that Wikipedia article. It's a little real research, not TV news stories that patch together unsourced and stock pictures to construct an image that has no relation to reality.

This is the same thing as the "Great Oil Plume." The vast majority of actual debris in the ocean is tiny particles that are swept up in fine nets by researchers and catalogued. There is a deliberate attempt to give TV viewers the idea that there is a sea of floating crap out there. In fact, the maximum density is about one tiny piece of plastic in every three square meters of ocean. That piece, on average, weighs about 0.02 grams (numbers from the Wikipedia article).

This is something that needs to be watched, but nothing close to the disaster being presented. I would put higher priorities on plastic debris on beaches and things that have much more serious health effects on birds and such. I would have no problem with working toward plastics that break down more easily, but the required properties of different polymers don't always lend themselves to that. I buy chips in compostable bags, which is interesting in that they make ten times the crinkly noise that ordinary chip bags do. Not recommended for the theater.

As with the oil plume, the ocean seems to be doing something with the plastic, but nobody knows quite what yet.