Fungi could be the answer to breaking down plastic junk
Fungi could be the answer to breaking down plastic junk
Enzymes that break down a polymer in wood can also handle polyethylene.
Fungi were the first things to eat trees, so I suppose its not surprising that they could maybe eat plastic.
I guess at this point, it's inevitable.
But I really worry when these plastic eating bacteria/fungi/whatever become prevalent.
Because there is a lot of plastic everywhere. And some of it is better if it isn't destroyed/consumed (like medical equipment, plumbing, etc)What is the application for plastic eating fungi? I thought that burning is the preferred alternative if all you want is to reduce it to CO2. That was you get some energy out of it too.
Or is it hoped that they will be able to survive in the oceans and/or landfills that contain too many toxic substances to burn directly?
Well burning releases a lot of highly toxic chemicals for starters
Well, not for polyethylene if done at high enough temperatures. And I doubt that the fungi will like plastic covered in toxic substances. But maybe there is a price advantage there if you don't need to ship the plastic to a incinerator.
I didn't read up on it in detail but apparently incineration has some large disadvantages, only about 22% of all plastic waste is incinerated. So fungi could be useful for the remaining 78% so it might be more useful than I expected.
While good, it also means the CO2 sequestered in these plastic products will be released into the atmosphere 🥲
Actually fungi often tend to store a lot of CO2 below ground.
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Not only are landfills bursting with it, but it has also polluted our oceans to the point that a tiny creature that had apparently made microplastics part of its diet was named Eurythenes plasticus.
While hundreds of fungi and other microorganisms are known to break down various plastics, it was previously unknown that these particular hardwood-eating species could degrade polyethylene.
This weight loss occurred because the fungi broke down the lignin and cellulose into products that included carbon dioxide.
Plastic also lost weight by being converted to simpler molecules by enzymes from the fungi for the same amount of time, losing nearly half of its mass.
It was possible they would eat less plastic without their favorite food in sight since something about wood presumably activates their digestive enzymes.
Their degradation of more plastic, when it was offered to them, showed that they were easily able to metabolically adapt and change up their diet when there was no wood around.
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At least you tried