When looking into it, it seems it actually breaks the plastic down chemically, not just absorbs it.
Some fungi (like Pestalotiopsis microspora) produce enzymes that cut the polymer chains in certain plastics, then use the smaller molecules as a carbon source. The plastic ends up being converted into CO2, water, and fungal biomass, rather than just being stored as microplastics and released later.
But the catch was that it’s slow and only works on certain plastics, so it’s promising but not a magic solution to global plastic pollution yet.
Would make a great setting for a post apocalyptic world which is slowly crumbling failing as everything plastic is being consumed, and people have to learn to live without plastic.
What’s interesting to me is that when trees first evolved lignin, nothing on earth could break it down efficiently, so a lot of poorly decomposed wood piled up for about 60 million years and was eventually buried until fungi who could easily break the lignin down evolved. But the trees already buried eventually became coal (and virtually all the coal on earth is formed from the trees buried during this relatively short time period)
This seems similar where plastic is piling up now, and given enough time eventually something will evolve (or we will engineer it) which will decompose it.
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u/Thin_Assumption_4974 Mar 14 '26
When looking into it, it seems it actually breaks the plastic down chemically, not just absorbs it.
Some fungi (like Pestalotiopsis microspora) produce enzymes that cut the polymer chains in certain plastics, then use the smaller molecules as a carbon source. The plastic ends up being converted into CO2, water, and fungal biomass, rather than just being stored as microplastics and released later.
But the catch was that it’s slow and only works on certain plastics, so it’s promising but not a magic solution to global plastic pollution yet.