I'm sure they do - wear and tear to anything outdoors is inevitable (except maybe if your fence is titanium, in which case the wear and tear probably amounts to individual electrons!) but I would still very much prefer that those plastic bags be put to use rather than decompose - at broadly the same rate - uselessly in a landfill site.
> but I would still very much prefer that those plastic bags be put to use rather than decompose - at broadly the same rate - uselessly in a landfill site.
Well, to be honest, if the landfill is properly managed, protected from leaching into the water table, I would personally prefer those plastic bags to be exactly there -- in the landfill. If they're going to break down, I would rather have everything be concentrated in a single area rather than in thousands of fence posts near farms and ranches. We definitely should find ways to reuse those materials, but not at the cost of diffusely polluting things.
I agree. Landfill has been demonized as a solution to plastic waste but is likely optimal. If stuff is in landfill we can just leave it there until better recycling tech becomes available. Problems like plastic leeching are ignored by recycling proponents because it is a hard problem to measure, so it is more convenient to ignore.
