Biodegradable waste does not always degrade faster than plastic.

Plastic pollution has become a global environmental issue, with between 22 and 48 millions of tons of plastic waste accumulating in the environment annually. Transitioning from conventional plastics to biodegradable materials for single-use items could limit this accumulation, but the degradation advantage of biodegradable material over plastic lacks empirical evidence from in situ experiments. Here, we compared the short-term degradation of seven single-use items (e.