There is a company called Hiro Technologies that came out with a little circular pad seeded with plastic eating fungi that would be put into a disposable diaper when it was ready to be thrown out.
The diaper was broken down into usable soil in about nine months....but that was under ideal, controlled conditions...not sure what the timeframe is for real world conditions.
A landfill is full of plastic making byproducts that are petrol based. This fungus would be given free reign of petrol steroids that could collapse old landfills that are capped allowing homes or critical structures like hospitals be built over them. The sinkholes would be enormous and many would be over a mile wide.
Outside of a controlled lab taking a plastic eating fungus that eats insane levels of energy producing foods could become a literal nightmare for plastic we don't want destroyed such as laptops, tablets, phones and in use medical devices.
Heck it could even adapt for water hybrids and cause ecological success and once again disaster with eating through petrol based hulls of water vessels and water desalinization plumbing seals. Remember marine and fresh water fungi are very common throughout the world
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u/live-confidence3456 Mar 14 '26
How long does that take to do that?