The carboniferous period lasted 60 million years. We probably have some time to work with.
I was thinking more that the plastics in question are free-floating in a soluble medium and thus ripe for digestion by an opportunistic microbe.
EDIT: Just to clarify: As long as disasters happen slowly enough and there are actually local maxima for the species to evolve "into", everything may be fine for "humans"... but those assumptions may be overly optimistic.