system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5 why does plastic take so long to decompose while natural polymers such as DNA, proteins, fibers and raw latex don't?

My previous attempt got removed for being too straightfoward, and I couldn't find anything on the rules forbidding me to try again, let me know if this is not allowed.

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I understand that most human-made polymers will take a long time to decompose, while naturally occurring ones usually won't. Does it have to do with them being polymers at all? Is there a way to make disposable plastic that will decompose faster while still being useful? Is this a deliberate choice or is there some intrinsic limitation to our current technology?

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edit: Probably worth mentioning, I don't know a lot about chemistry, but I was taught in school that plastic takes such a long time to decompose due to being a polymer, and only recently did I realize that DNA and proteins also fit into this definition.
gpt
Think of how something like a piece of wooden log would break down. A bunch of the steps would be things like it growing moldy and maybe insects crawling on it and it getting all slimey with bacteria and growing mosses and worms eating it and etc.   


There is nothing magic that makes it so that couldn't happen to plastic, it's just that plastic was invented like 70 years ago so no worms or insects or bacteria has much time to get good at living off plastic.   


(this actually happened before, when trees themselves were new nothing on earth really ate cellulose, so there was a point several hundred million years ago where dead plants just started piling up and up and up never fullying rotting, which ironically is where a lot of coal and oil comes from that is made into plastic)