Hundreds of thousands of years from now, the most persistent signs of man's present civilization could be masses of well-preserved plastic bottles, containers, bags and wrappings. That is because plastics resist natural processes of decay almost indefinitely. To make the material go away when it is thrown away, scientists in Germany have developed a type of plastic that disintegrates when exposed to the ultraviolet rays in sunlight. But it has a hitch: the sun does not distinguish between unopened plastic containers and discards.
Now the British have come up with a better solution. The big packaging firm of Coloroll, Ltd., is producing...