It’s easy for the natural processes to do it and to desalinate, because it isn’t bound by the same economic principles as humans. The sun pumps a lot of free energy into the system to do evaporation. We can get things out, but can we get them out at a price that works?
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… it goes through the process of absorbing plastic while it sits on the shelf 
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If you’re doing multiple-effect evaporation, then desal is very energy intensive (but still made as cheap as possible by the multiple-effects) [1]
Reverse osmosis desalination has the advantages that a) lower specific energy (kJ / kg) and b) all-electric (can run on renewables) and c) can run “batchwise”, i.e. fill the tanks during times of abundant sunshine and wind, let the tanks drain down at other times. Can also be used as a grid load management tool e.g. run the plant 100% when the solar panels are making more electricity than is in demand.
Note that reverse osmosis will be a big part of recycling water too.
Also: pretty sure that at some point in the near future, we’ll look back at toilets using fresh water as a kind of mad extravagance.
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