[FredPret]

After a long time hanging around, some organism might evolve that eats it though

[TechBro8615]

Or a second industrial civilization would use it to power their cars...

[blueflow]

Which happened for all fossils already and they are still there.

[FredPret]

Fair point, although not all of them, and not all of those that do remain. If styrofoam ever starts rotting, maybe the styro-philes will eat 100% of each cup and poop out only completely normal organic matter. Nobody will ever find it!

[hutzlibu]

Can we develope such a microorganism please?

[InvaderFizz]

Worms were discovered that eat styrofoam. There was a lot about it going on the news last summer[0].

0: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/superworms-eat-an...

[hutzlibu]

That is something, but apparently not quite what I want:

"Rinke and his colleagues are not suggesting that superworms should be released into landfills or polluted landscapes to munch through mountains of plastic"

[ekianjo]

Still all there compared to what quantity exactly? Ever hard of the gazillions of fossil fuels?

[blueflow]

They still are there to detect them. The question was whether our fossil records would be detectable.