Researchers from Yale University recently discovered a mushroom in the jungles of Ecuador that is most magical indeed, for this little fungus dines on polyurethane, a very common type of plastic.
Here's more on this amazing fungus:
The fungi, called “Pestalotiopsis microspore”, is able to survive on eating plastic alone—while without the need for air or light.
Students Jonathan Russell and Pria Anand have written in the journal ‘Applied and Environmental Microbiology’, that the enzyme the fungus uses to decompose plastic has been isolated.
Scientists hope to use the extracted chemical to solve the plastic trash and help bioremediation projects.
Now that's a creative way to help solve our global waste problem, unless it turns into an ever bigger problem when the fungus develops a taste for human flesh!
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Mmm, mushrooms! Are there mushrooms that eat living chickens? ;)
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That is why they are talking about just using the enzyme in a control way, not throwing a fist full of spores as a dump site.
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Geoduck is right, this would solve so many problems but mushrooms produce spores that can travel quite far, could you imagine what a mess north america would be in if all of our polyethelyne started rotting? I don't know much about PE, but apparently it is used as an electrical insulator among other things.
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Wouldn't have to eat flesh, just start eating ALL the plastic.
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